Analysis of Child in Red
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
Sometimes she walks through the village in her
little red dress
all absorbed in restraining herself,
and yet, despite herself, she seems to move
according to the rhythm of her life to come.
She runs a bit, hesitates, stops,
half-turns around...
and, all while dreaming, shakes her head
for or against.
Then she dances a few steps
that she invents and forgets,
no doubt finding out that life
moves on too fast.
It's not so much that she steps out
of the small body enclosing her,
but that all she carries in herself
frolics and ferments.
It's this dress that she'll remember
later in a sweet surrender;
when her whole life is full of risks,
the little red dress will always seem right.
Scheme | AXBXX XXXX XXXX XABX AAXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111101000 1011 101001001 0101011111 010101010111 1101101 1101 01110101 1101 1110011 1101001 1110111 1111 11111111 101100100 111110001 1001 11111010 10001010 10111111 010111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 672 |
Words | 125 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 21 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 08, 2023
- 38 sec read
- 262 Views
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"Child in Red" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29647/child-in-red>.
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