Analysis of A Worn-Out Pencil
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
Welladay!
Here I lay
You at rest--all worn away,
O my pencil, to the tip
Of our old companionship!
Memory
Sighs to see
What you are, and used to be,
Looking backward to the time
When you wrote your earliest rhyme!--
When I sat
Filing at
Your first point, and dreaming that
Your initial song should be
Worthy of posterity.
With regret
I forget
If the song be living yet,
Yet remember, vaguely now,
It was honest, anyhow.
You have brought
Me a thought--
Truer yet was never taught,--
That the silent song is best,
And the unsung worthiest.
So if I,
When I die,
May as uncomplainingly
Drop aside as now you do,
Write of me, as I of you:--
Here lies one
Who begun
Life a-singing, heard of none;
And he died, satisfied,
With his dead songs by his side.
Scheme | ABBCC DDDEE AAADA AAAFF AAAAA XABAX GGGAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (37%) |
Metre | 1 111 1111101 1110101 1101010 100 111 1110111 1010101 11111001 111 101 1110101 1010111 1010100 101 101 1011101 1010101 111010 111 101 1011101 1010111 0001100 111 111 111 1011111 1111111 111 101 1010111 01110 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 721 |
Words | 147 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 16 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 81 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 20 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 50 Views
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"A Worn-Out Pencil" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20813/a-worn-out-pencil>.
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