Analysis of Mid-Forest Fear
Roderic Quinn 1867 (Surry Hills, New South Wales) – 1949 (Darlinghurst, New South Wales)
SHE is standing at the gate,
Tall and sweet,
And although the hour be late
She will greet
Me, her lover,
Smiling over
Absent mind and tardy feet.
‘Rest,’ I’ll say to her, ‘and more rest,’
As she wraps her love around me,
And I’ll tell her of the forest,
Of the strange, fear-haunted forest
Where the fleshless beings found me.
For I trod a rock-strewn rude way
Thinking only of my lover,
When the moonlight on the woodway,
Made a weird-way of the woodway,
And a place where demons hover.
For the leaves that had been sleeping
On the sodden soil-bed lying,
Look a motion and ’gan creeping,
Like a thousand small feet creeping,
And there rose a distant sighing.
Why the trees did droop their tresses,
Weeping leaves for something under,
And what bode in dim recesses,
Feline-lurked in dim recesses,
Paled my cheeks and heart to ponder.
Had I feet I would have hurried,
But the moonlit forest chained me,
Soul and body grasped and worried,
With frost-fingers gripped and worried,
Till, half-stayed, my hurt heart pained me.…
‘Rest,’ I’ll say, ‘my Love, and more rest;
Things unseen have life and motion
And they haunt the moonlit forest—
Soul-affronting haunt the forest,
And men meet them on the ocean.’
She will look so grave and kind,
Saying ‘Rest—
Rest is here for heart and mind
On this breast—
Put aside all
Fancies idle,
I will shield you—Love is best.’
Scheme | ABABCCB DEFFE GCGGC HHHHH XCIIC JEJJE DKFFK LDLDXXD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110101 101 0101011 111 1010 1010 1010101 11110011 11101011 01101010 10111010 1011011 11101111 10101110 101101 1011101 00111010 10111110 10101110 10100110 10101110 01101010 10111110 10111010 01101100 1101100 11101110 11111110 1011011 10101010 11101010 11111111 11111011 10111010 0110110 10101010 01111010 1111101 101 1111101 111 1011 1010 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,596 |
Words | 250 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 7 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 131 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 98 Views
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"Mid-Forest Fear" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32935/mid-forest-fear>.
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