Analysis of Sonnets On Miss Savage
Samuel Butler 1613 (Strensham) – 1680 (London)
i
She was too kind, wooed too persistently,
Wrote moving letters to me day by day;
The more she wrote, the more unmoved was I,
The more she gave, the less could I repay.
Therefore I grieve, not that I was not loved,
But that, being loved, I could not love again.
I liked, but like and love are far removed;
Hard though I tried to love I tried in vain.
For she was plain and lame and fat and short,
Forty and over-kind. Hence it befell
That though I loved her in a certain sort,
Yet did I love too wisely but not well.
Ah! had she been more beauteous or less kind
She might have found me of another mind.
And now, though twenty years are come and gone,
That little lame lady's face is with me still;
Never a day but what, on every one,
She dwells with me, as dwell she ever will.
She said she wished I knew not wrong from right;
It was not that; I knew, and would have chosen
Wrong if I could, but, in my own despite,
Power to choose wrong in my chilled veins was frozen.
'Tis said that if a woman woo, no man
Should leave her till she have prevailed; and, true,
A man will yield for pity, if he can,
But if the flesh rebels what can he do?
I could not. Hence I grieve my whole life long
The wrong I did, in that I did no wrong.
Had I been some young sailor, continent
Perforce three weeks and then well plied with wine,
I might in time have tried to yield consent
And almost (though I doubt it) made her mine.
Or had it been but once and never again,
Come what come might, she should have had her way;
But yielding once were yielding twice, and then
I had been hers for ever and a day.
Or had she only been content to crave
A marriage of true minds, her wish was granted;
My mind was hers, I was her willing slave
In all things else except the one she wanted:
And here, alas! at any rate to me
She was an all too, too impossible she.
Scheme | ABCACXDXXEFEFGG XHIHJIJIKLKLMM XNXNDCDCOPOPBB |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1 1111110100 1101011111 0111010111 0111011101 111111111 11101111101 1111011101 1111111101 1111010101 1001011101 1111000101 1111110111 111111111 1111110101 0111011101 11011011111 10011111001 1111111101 1111111111 11111101110 1111101101 101110111110 1111010111 1101110101 0111110111 1101101111 1111111111 0111011111 1111110100 0111011111 1101111101 011111101 11111101001 1111111101 1101010101 1110110001 1111011011 01011101110 1110110101 01110101110 0101110111 11111101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,812 |
Words | 377 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 15, 14, 14 |
Lines Amount | 43 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 465 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 124 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:53 min read
- 121 Views
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