Analysis of The Statues And The Tear
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 1863 (Bodmin, Cornwall) – 1944 (Cornwall)
All night a fountain pleads,
Telling her beads,
Her tinkling beads monotonous 'neath the moon;
And where she springs atween,
Two statues lean--
Two Kings, their marble beards with moonlight strewn.
Till hate had frozen speech,
Each hated each,
Hated and died, and went unto his place:
And still inveterate
They lean and hate
With glare of stone implacable, face to face.
One, who bade set them here
In stone austere,
To both was dear, and did not guess at all:
Yet with her new-wed lord
Walking the sward
Paused, and for two dead friends a tear let all.
She turn'd and went her way.
Yet in the spray
The shining tear attempts, but cannot lie.
Night-long the fountain drips,
But even slips
Untold that one bead of her rosary:
While they, who know it would
Lie if it could,
Lean on and hate, watching it, eye to eye.
Scheme | AABBCBDDEFGEHIJKKJLLMNNOPPM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110101 1001 010010100101 01111 111 111101111 111101 1101 1001011011 010100 1101 11110100111 111111 0101 1111011111 110111 1001 1011110111 110101 1001 0101011101 110101 1101 0111110100 111111 1111 1101101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 797 |
Words | 151 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 27 |
Lines Amount | 27 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 632 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 149 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 45 sec read
- 119 Views
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"The Statues And The Tear" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/35025/the-statues-and-the-tear>.
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