Analysis of To Mary
I.
How, my dear Mary, -- are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
II.
What hand would crush the silken-wingèd fly,
The youngest of inconstant April's minions,
Because it cannot climb the purest sky,
Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?
Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,
When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions
The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,
Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.
III.
To thy fair feet a wingèd Vision came,
Whose date should have been longer than a day,
And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,
And in thy sight its fading plumes display;
The watery bow burned in the evening flame,
But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way-
And that is dead.-O, let me not believe
That anything of mine is fit to live!
IV.
Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years
Considering and retouching Peter Bell;
Watering his laurels with the killing tears
Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell
Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres
Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well
May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil
The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.
V.
My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature
As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise
Clothes for our grandsons-but she matches Peter,
Though he took nineteen years, and she three days
In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre
She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,
Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress
Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.'
VI.
If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow
Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate
Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:
A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;
In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.
If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate
Can shrive you of that sin, -- if sin there be
In love, when it becomes idolatry.
Scheme | ABCBCBCDD AAEAEAEFF AGHGHGHXX CIJXJIJKK LMNMNMNXE AOXOXOXLL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1 11110111010 110111111 11011101110 0111110111 11111110110 1111011111 111111111 101101001 1 1111010111 010111010 0111010101 101101011 111111111 111101011 0101000101 0111111101 1 1111011101 1111110101 01011111111 0011110101 01001100101 10101011111 0111111101 110111111 1 1001111111 01000010101 10011010101 1111111111 1101110101 110110101011 111100101011 010101001001 1 11011111010 1111011101 11101111010 1111110111 01010111010 1111110111 1101110101 11110101 1 11110111010 111110 010110110 01110111011 0101001010 1101111111 1111111111 0111010100 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,108 |
Words | 396 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 |
Lines Amount | 54 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 279 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 65 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 2:00 min read
- 151 Views
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"To Mary" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29309/to-mary>.
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