Analysis of Lawstudent And Coach

Lesbia Harford 1891 (Brighton) – 1927 (Australia)



Each day I sit in an ill-lighted room
To teach a boy;
For one hour by the clock great words and dreams
Are our employ.
We read St Agnes' Eve and that more fair
Eve of St Mark
At a small table up against the wall
In the half-dark.
I tell him all the wise things I have read
Concerning Keats.
'His earlier work is overfull of sense
And sensual sweets.'
I tell him all that comes into my mind
From God-knows-where,
Remark, 'In English poets Bertha's type
Is jolly rare.
She's a real girl that strains her eyes to read
And cricks her neck.
Now Madeline could pray all night nor feel
Her body's check.
And Bertha reads, p'rhaps the first reading girl
In English rhyme.'
It's maddening work to say what Keats has said
A second time.
The boy sits sideways with averted head.
His brown cheek glows.
I like his black eyes and his sprawling limbs
And his short nose.
He, feeling, dreads the splendour of the verse,
But he must learn
To write about it neatly and to quote
These lines that burn.
He drapes his soul in my obscuring words,
Makes himself fit
To go into a sunny world and take
His part in it.
'Examiners' point of view, you know,' say I,
'Is commonsense.
You must sift poetry before you can
Sift Evidence.'


Scheme ABCBDEFEGHIHJDKDGLMLNOGOGPQPRSTSUVWVYIZ1
Poetic Form
Metre 1111011101 1101 11101011101 11001 1111010111 1111 1011010101 0011 1111011111 0101 110011111 01001 1111110111 1111 010101011 1101 1011110111 0101 1100111111 0101 0101101101 0101 11001111111 0101 011110101 1111 1111101101 0111 110101101 1111 1101110011 1111 1111010101 1011 1101010101 1101 01001111111 101 1111000111 1100
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,215
Words 235
Sentences 17
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 40
Lines Amount 40
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 933
Words per stanza (avg) 229
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:10 min read
89

Lesbia Harford

Lesbia Harford was an Australian poet, novelist and political activist. more…

All Lesbia Harford poems | Lesbia Harford Books

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