Analysis of If Only
Christina Georgina Rossetti 1830 (London) – 1894 (London)
If I might only love my God and die!
But now He bids me love Him and live on,
Now when the bloom of all my life is gone,
The pleasant half of life has quite gone by.
My tree of hope is lopped that spread so high,
And I forget how summer glowed and shone,
While autumn grips me with its fingers wan
And frets me with its fitful windy sigh.
When autumn passes then must winter numb,
And winter may not pass a weary while,
But when it passes spring shall flower again;
And in that spring who weepeth now shall smile,
Yea, they shall wax who now are on the wane,
Yea, they shall sing for love when Christ shall come.
Scheme | ABCAADBAEFGFHE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111011101 1111111011 1101111111 0101111111 1111111111 0101110101 1101111101 0111110101 1101011101 0101110101 11110111001 001111111 1111111101 1111111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 608 |
Words | 126 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 14 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 474 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 124 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 37 sec read
- 125 Views
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"If Only" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/5829/if-only>.
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