Analysis of Sadness and Joy



I pray you, Sadness, leave me soon,
In sweet invention thou art poor!
Thy sister, Joy can make ten songs
While thou art making four.

One hour with thee is sweet enough;
But when we find the whole day gone
And no created thing is left --
We mourn the evil done.

Thou art too slow to shape thy thoughts
In stone, on canvas, or in song;
But Joy, being full of active heat,
Must do some deed ere long.

Thy sighs are gentle, sweet thy tears;
But if thou canst not help a man
To prove in substance what he feels --
Then givve me Joy, who can.

Therefore sweet Sadness, leave me soon,
Let thy bright sister, Joy, come more;
For she can make ten lovely songs
While thou art making four.


Scheme axbC xxxx xdxd xexe acbC
Poetic Form Quatrain  (60%)
Etheree  (35%)
Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 11110111 01010111 11011111 111101 110111101 11110111 01010111 110101 11111111 01110101 111011101 111111 11110111 11111101 11010111 111111 1110111 11110111 11111101 111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 681
Words 136
Sentences 7
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 103
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 30, 2023

40 sec read
154

William Henry Davies

William Henry Davies or W H Davies was a Welsh poet and writer Davies spent a significant part of his life as a tramp or vagabond in the United States and United Kingdom but became known as one of the most popular poets of his time The principal themes in his work are the marvels of nature observations about lifes hardships his own tramping adventures and the various characters he met Davies is usually considered as one of the Georgian poets although much of his work is atypical of the style and themes adopted by others of the genre more…

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