Analysis of Dreamer, Say
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
Dreamer, say, will you dream for me
A wild sweet dream of a foreign land,
Whose border sips of a foaming sea
With lips of coral and silver sand;
Where warm winds loll on the shady deeps,
Or lave themselves in the tearful mist
The great wild wave of the breaker weeps
O'er crags of opal and amethyst?
Dreamer, say, will you dream a dream
Of tropic shades in the lands of shine,
Where the lily leans o'er an amber stream
That flows like a rill of wasted wine,--
Where the palm-trees, lifting their shields of green,
Parry the shafts of the Indian sun
Whose splintering vengeance falls between
The reeds below where the waters run?
Dreamer, say, will you dream of love
That lives in a land of sweet perfume,
Where the stars drip down from the skies above
In molten spatters of bud and bloom?
Where never the weary eyes are wet,
And never a sob in the balmy air,
And only the laugh of the paroquet
Breaks the sleep of the silence there?
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJXKBK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111111 011110101 110110101 111100101 111110101 110100101 011110101 1011100100 10111101 110100111 10101101101 111011101 1011101111 1001101001 110010101 010110101 10111111 110011101 1011110101 010101101 110010111 0100100101 01001101 10110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 917 |
Words | 179 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 244 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 59 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 54 sec read
- 47 Views
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