Analysis of Counting the Beats

Robert Graves 1895 (Wimbledon) – 1985 (Deià)



You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.

Cloudless day,
Night, and a cloudless day,
Yet the huge storm will burst upon their heads one day
From a bitter sky.

Where shall we be,
(She whispers) where shall we be,
When death strikes home, O where then shall we be
Who were you and I ?

Not there but here,
(He whispers) only here,
As we are, here, together, now and here,
Always you and I.

Counting the beats,
Counting the slow heart beats,
The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats,
Wakeful they lie.


Scheme aaaa BBBA ccca ddda eeea BBBA
Poetic Form
Metre 1101 110101 0111110101 11111 1001 100111 01011110111 111 101 100101 101111011111 10101 1111 1101111 1111111111 10101 1111 110101 1111010101 1101 1001 100111 01011110111 111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 668
Words 134
Sentences 7
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 86
Words per stanza (avg) 22
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

40 sec read
361

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, scholar/translator/writer of antiquity specializing in Classical Greece and Rome, novelist and soldier in World War One. more…

All Robert Graves poems | Robert Graves Books

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