Analysis of Slow Movement

William Carlos Williams 1883 (Rutherford) – 1963 (Rutherford)



All those treasures that lie in the little bolted box whose tiny space is
Mightier than the room of the stars, being secret and filled with dreams:
All those treasures—I hold them in my hand—are straining continually
Against the sides and the lid and the two ends of the little box in which I guard them;
Crying that there is no sun come among them this great while and that they weary of shining;
Calling me to fold back the lid of the little box and to give them sleep finally.

But the night I am hiding from them, dear friend, is far more desperate than their night!
And so I take pity on them and pretend to have lost the key to the little house of my treasures;
For they would die of weariness were I to open it, and not be merely faint and sleepy
As they are now.


Scheme XXAXXA XXAX
Poetic Form
Metre 111011001010111011 10010110110100111 111011101111001000 010100100111010101111 1011111101111101110110 101111011010101111100 1011110111111110111 0111101100111101101011110 11111100011101011101010 1111
Characters 781
Words 153
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 6, 4
Lines Amount 10
Letters per line (avg) 61
Words per line (avg) 15
Letters per stanza (avg) 303
Words per stanza (avg) 76
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 30, 2023

45 sec read
67

William Carlos Williams

William Carlos Williams was a Latino-American poet closely associated with modernism and imagism. more…

All William Carlos Williams poems | William Carlos Williams Books

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