Analysis of The Mystery Of A Year

Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)



A little while, a year agone,
I knew her for a romping child,
A dimple and a glance that shone
With idle mischief when she smiled.

To-day she passed me in the press,
And turning with a quick surprise
I wondered at her stateliness,
I wondered at her altered eyes.

To me the street was just the same,
The people and the city's stir;
But life had kindled into flame,
And all the world was changed for her.

I watched her in the crowded ways,
A noble form, a queenly head,
With all the woman in her gaze,
The conscious woman in her tread.


Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH
Poetic Form Traditional rhyme
Quatrain 
Metre 0101011 11010101 01000111 11010111 11111001 01010101 110101 11010101 11011101 01000101 11110011 01011110 11000101 0101011 11010001 01010001
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 526
Words 106
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 103
Words per stanza (avg) 26
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 03, 2023

32 sec read
77

Archibald Lampman

Archibald Lampman FRSC was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in English." Lampman is classed as one of Canada's Confederation Poets, a group which also includes Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. more…

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