Analysis of Negative Indicative
Philip Larkin 1922 (Coventry) – 1985 (Hull)
Never to walk from the station's lamps and laurels
Carrying my father's lean old leather case
Crumbling like the register at the hotel;
Never to be shown upstairs
To a plain room smelling of soap, a towel
Neatly hung on the back of a rush chair,
The floor uneven, the grate choked with a frill,
Muslin curtains hiding the market square;
Never to visit the lame girl who lives three doors
Down Meeting-House Lane — 'This pile is ready; these
I shall finish tonight, with luck' — to watch, as she pours
Tea from a gold-lined jubilee pot, her eyes,
Her intelligent face; never, walking away
As light fails, to notice the first star
Pulsing alone in a long shell-coloured sky,
And remember the year has turned, and feel the air
Alive with the emblematic sound of water —
Scheme | XXXX XAXA BXBX XXXA X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101110101010 10011011101 100101001001 1011101 10111011010 1011011011 01010011101 1010100101 101100111111 11011111101 1110011111111 1101110101 001001101001 111110011 10010011101 001001110101 01100101110 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 756 |
Words | 139 |
Sentences | 1 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 1 |
Lines Amount | 17 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 120 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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"Negative Indicative" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/53834/negative-indicative>.
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