Analysis of To My Name-Child
Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 (Edinburgh) – 1894 (Vailima, Samoa)
Some day soon this rhyming volume, if you learn with proper speed,
Little Louis Sanchez, will be given you to read.
Then you shall discover, that your name was printed down
By the English printers, long before, in London town.
In the great and busy city where the East and West are met,
All the little letters did the English printer set;
While you thought of nothing, and were still too young to play,
Foreign people thought of you in places far away.
Ay, and when you slept, a baby, over all the English lands
Other little children took the volume in their hands;
Other children questioned, in their homes across the seas:
Who was little Louis, won't you tell us, mother, please?
Now that you have spelt your lesson, lay it down and go and play,
Seeking shells and seaweed on the sands of Monterey,
Watching all the mighty whalebones, lying buried by the breeze,
Tiny sandpipers, and the huge Pacific seas.
And remember in your playing, as the sea-fog rolls to you,
Long ere you could read it, how I told you what to do;
And that while you thought of no one, nearly half the world away
Some one thought of Louis on the beach of Monterey!
Scheme | XXAA BBCC DDEE CCEE FFCC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (80%) |
Metre | 111110101111101 1010101110111 1110101111101 1010101010101 001010101010111 1010101010101 1111100011111 1010111010101 101110101010101 1010101010011 1010100110101 1110101111101 111111101110101 10101101101 10101011010101 1010010101 001001101011111 1111111111111 011111111010101 111110101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,150 |
Words | 214 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 45 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 178 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:04 min read
- 100 Views
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