Analysis of The Poor Ghost
Christina Georgina Rossetti 1830 (London) – 1894 (London)
'Oh whence do you come, my dear friend, to me,
With your golden hair all fallen below your knee,
And your face as white as snowdrops on the lea,
And your voice as hollow as the hollow sea?'
'From the other world I come back to you,
My locks are uncurled with dripping drenching dew.
You know the old, whilst I know the new:
But to-morrow you shall know this too.'
'Oh not to-morrow into the dark, I pray;
Oh not to-morrow, too soon to go away:
Here I feel warm and well-content and gay:
Give me another year, another day.'
'Am I so changed in a day and a night
That mine own only love shrinks from me with fright,
Is fain to turn away to left or right
And cover up his eyes from the sight?'
'Indeed I loved you, my chosen friend,
I loved you for life, but life has an end;
Through sickness I was ready to tend:
But death mars all, which we cannot mend.
'Indeed I loved you; I love you yet,
If you will stay where your bed is set,
Where I have planted a violet,
Which the wind waves, which the dew makes wet.'
'Life is gone, then love too is gone,
It was a reed that I leant upon:
Never doubt I will leave you alone
And not wake you rattling bone with bone.
'I go home alone to my bed,
Dug deep at the foot and deep at the head,
Roofed in with a load of lead,
Warm enough for the forgotten dead.
'But why did your tears soak through the clay,
And why did your sobs wake me where I lay?
I was away, far enough away:
Let me sleep now till the Judgment Day.'
Scheme | AAAA BBBB CCCC DDDD EEEE FFXF XXGG HHHH CCCC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (78%) |
Metre | 1111111111 111011100111 0111111101 01111010101 1010111111 1111110101 110111101 111011111 11110010111 11110111101 1111011001 1101010101 1111001001 11110111111 1111011111 010111101 011111101 1111111111 110111011 111111101 011111111 111111111 111100100 101110111 11111111 1101111001 101111101 011110111 11101111 1110101101 1010111 101100101 111111101 0111111111 110110101 111110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,430 |
Words | 304 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 122 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:29 min read
- 84 Views
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