Analysis of Lavinia
James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)
The lovely young Lavinia once had friends;
And fortune smiled deceitful on her birth:
For, in her helpless years deprived of all,
Of every stay, save innocence and Heaven,
She, with her widow'd mother, feeble, old,
And poor, lived in a cottage, far retired
Among the windings of a woody vale;
By solitude and deep-surrounding shades,
But more by bashful modesty, conceal'd.
Together thus they shunn'd the cruel scorn
Which virtue, sunk to poverty, would meet
From giddy passion and low-minded pride;
Almost on Nature's common bounty fed,
Like the gay birds that sung them to repose,
Content, and careless of to-morrow's fare.
Her form was fresher than the morning rose,
When the dew wets its leaves; unstain'd and pure,
As is the lily or the mountain snow.
The modest virtues mingled in her eyes,
Still on the ground dejected, darting all
Their humid means into the blooming flowers;
Or when the mournful tale her mother told
Of what her faithless fortune promised once,
Thrill'd in her thought, they like the dewy star
Of evening, shone in tears. A native grace
Sat fair-proportion'd on her polish'd limbs,
Veil'd in a simple robe, their best attire,
Beyond the pomp of dress; for loveliness
Needs not the foreign aid of ornament,
But is, when unadorn'd, adorn'd the most.
Thoughtless of beauty, she was beauty's self,
Recluse amid the close-embowering woods:
As in the hollow breast of Apennine,
Beneath the shelter of encircling hills,
A myrtle rises, far from human eye,
And breathes its balmy fragrance o'er the wild;
So flourish'd, blooming, and unseen by all,
The sweet Lavinia.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNONPQRCSETUVWXAYZ1 2 3 4 5 6 C7 |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101010111 0101010101 1001010111 110011100010 1101010101 0110010101 010110101 110010101 1111010001 0101110101 1101110011 1101001101 111010101 1011111101 100101111 0111010101 1011110101 1101010101 0101010001 1101010101 11010101010 1101010101 110110101 1001110101 1101010101 1101010101 10010111010 01011111 1101011100 111010101 101101111 01010111 100101110 01010101001 0101011101 01110101001 1101000111 01010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,559 |
Words | 268 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 38 |
Lines Amount | 38 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,246 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 266 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 13, 2023
- 1:24 min read
- 105 Views
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"Lavinia" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20581/lavinia>.
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