Analysis of Written in Germany, On One of The Coldest Days Of The Century

William Wordsworth 1770 (Wordsworth House) – 1850 (Cumberland)



A plague on your languages, German and Norse!
Let me have the song of the kettle;
And the tongs and the poker, instead of that horse
That gallops away with such fury and force
On this dreary dull plate of black metal.

See that Fly,--a disconsolate creature! perhaps
A child of the field or the grove;
And, sorrow for him! the dull treacherous heat
Has seduced the poor fool from his winter retreat,
And he creeps to the edge of my stove.

Alas! how he fumbles about the domains
Which this comfortless oven environ!
He cannot find out in what track he must crawl,
Now back to the tiles, then in search of the wall,
And now on the brink of the iron.

Stock-still there he stands like a traveller bemazed:
The best of his skill he has tried;
His feelers, methinks, I can see him put forth
To the east and the west, to the south and the north;
But he finds neither guide-post nor guide.

His spindles sink under him, foot, leg, and thigh!
His eyesight and hearing are lost;
Between life and death his blood freezes and thaws;
And his two pretty pinions of blue dusky gauze
Are glued to his sides by the frost.

No brother, no mate has he near him--while I
Can draw warmth from the cheek of my Love;
As blest and as glad, in this desolate gloom,
As if green summer grass were the floor of my room,
And woodbines were hanging above.

Yet, God is my witness, thou small helpless Thing!
Thy life I would gladly sustain
Till summer come up from the south, and with crowds
Of thy brethren a march thou should'st sound through the clouds,
And back to the forests again!


Scheme ABAAB XCDDC XEFFE DGHHG IJKKJ ILMML XENNE
Poetic Form
Metre 01111001001 111011010 001001001111 1101111001 1110111110 111011001 01101101 01011011001 101011111001 011101111 01111001001 111101 11011011111 11101101101 011011010 11111101001 01111111 1101111111 101001101001 111101111 1111011101 1101011 01101111001 0111011111 11111101 11011111111 111101111 11011011001 111101001111 0101001 11111011101 11111001 11011101011 1110011111101 01101001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,561
Words 296
Sentences 15
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5
Lines Amount 35
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 173
Words per stanza (avg) 42
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 12, 2023

1:29 min read
98

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was the husband of Eva Bartok. more…

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