Analysis of The Winter's Come

John Clare 1793 (Helpston) – 1864 (St Andrew's Hospital)



Sweet chestnuts brown like soling leather turn;
The larch trees, like the colour of the Sun;
That paled sky in the Autumn seemed to burn,
What a strange scene before us now does run--
Red, brown, and yellow, russet, black, and dun;
White thorn, wild cherry, and the poplar bare;
The sycamore all withered in the sun.
No leaves are now upon the birch tree there:
All now is stript to the cold wintry air.

See, not one tree but what has lost its leaves--
And yet the landscape wears a pleasing hue.
The winter chill on his cold bed receives
Foliage which once hung oer the waters blue.
Naked and bare the leafless trees repose.
Blue-headed titmouse now seeks maggots rare,
Sluggish and dull the leaf-strewn river flows;
That is not green, which was so through the year
Dark chill November draweth to a close.

Tis Winter, and I love to read indoors,
When the Moon hangs her crescent up on high;
While on the window shutters the wind roars,
And storms like furies pass remorseless by.
How pleasant on a feather bed to lie,
Or, sitting by the fire, in fancy soar
With Dante or with Milton to regions high,
Or read fresh volumes we've not seen before,
Or oer old Burton's Melancholy pore.


Scheme ABABBCBCC DEDEFCFXX GHGHHIHII
Poetic Form
Metre 110111101 011101101 1110010111 1011011111 1101010101 1111000101 010110001 1111010111 1111101101 1111111111 010110101 0101111101 1011110101 1001010101 110111101 1001011101 1111111101 110101101 110011111 1011010111 1101010011 011110101 1101010111 11010100101 11011101101 1111011101 111101001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,164
Words 218
Sentences 9
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 9, 9, 9
Lines Amount 27
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 308
Words per stanza (avg) 72
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:06 min read
109

John Clare

John Clare was an English poet in his time he was commonly known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet more…

All John Clare poems | John Clare Books

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