Analysis of A Spring Song And A Later

James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)



She sang a song of May for me,
Wherein once more I heard
The mirth of my glad infancy--
The orchard's earliest bird--
The joyous breeze among the trees
New-clad in leaf and bloom,
And there the happy honey-bees
In dewy gleam and gloom.

So purely, sweetly on the sense
Of heart and spirit fell
Her song of Spring, its influence--
Still irresistible,--
Commands me here--with eyes ablur--
To mate her bright refrain.
Though I but shed a rhyme for her
As dim as Autumn rain.


Scheme ABABCDCD XXXXEFEF
Poetic Form
Metre 11011111 011111 01111100 011001 01010101 110101 01010101 010101 11010101 110101 01111100 10100 0111111 110101 11110110 111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 464
Words 89
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 8
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 182
Words per stanza (avg) 43
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

27 sec read
305

James Whitcomb Riley

James Whitcomb Riley was an American writer, poet, and best-selling author. During his lifetime he was known as the "Hoosier Poet" and "Children's Poet" for his dialect works and his children's poetry respectively. more…

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