Analysis of Not For that City

Charlotte Mary Mew 1869 (Bloomsbury, London) – 1928 (London)



Not for that city of the level sun,
     Its golden streets and glittering gates ablaze—
     The shadeless, sleepless city of white days,
White nights, or nights and days that are as one—
We weary, when all is said , all thought, all done.
     We strain our eyes beyond this dusk to see
     What, from the threshold of eternity
We shall step into. No, I think we shun
The splendour of that everlasting glare,
   The clamour of that never-ending song.
   And if for anything we greatly long,
It is for some remote and quiet stair
     Which winds to silence and a space for sleep
     Too sound for waking and for dreams too deep.


Scheme ABBAACCADEEDFF
Poetic Form
Metre 1111010101 11010100101 011010111 1111011111 11011111111 11101011111 110110100 1110111111 01110101 011110101 011101101 1111010101 1111000111 1111001111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 631
Words 113
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 467
Words per stanza (avg) 112
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 14, 2023

33 sec read
38

Charlotte Mary Mew

Charlotte Mary Mew was an English poet whose work spans the eras of Victorian poetry and Modernism.  more…

All Charlotte Mary Mew poems | Charlotte Mary Mew Books

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