Analysis of To Wilhelmina

Sidney Lanier 1842 (Macon) – 1881 (Lynn)



A white face, drooping, on a bending neck:
 A tube-rose that with heavy petal curves
 Her stem:  a foam-bell on a wave that swerves
Back from the undulating vessel's deck.

From out the whitest cloud of summer steals
 The wildest lightning:  from this face of thine
 Thy soul, a fire-of-heaven, warm and fine,
In marvellous flashes its fair self reveals.

As when one gazes from the summer sea
 On some far gossamer cloud, with straining eye,
 Fearing to see it vanish in the sky,
So, floating, wandering Cloud-Soul, I watch thee.


Scheme ABBA CDDC EFFE
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 0111010101 0111110101 0101110111 110100101 1101011101 0101011111 11010110101 011011101 1111010101 11110011101 1011110001 11010011111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 525
Words 93
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 136
Words per stanza (avg) 31
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

28 sec read
94

Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier was a poet, writer, composer, critic, professor of literature at Johns Hopkins and first flutist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Baltiimore. He wrote the Centennial cantata for the opening ceremony of the 1876 Centennial celebration in Philadelphia. more…

All Sidney Lanier poems | Sidney Lanier Books

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