Analysis of Dreams Nascent
David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)
My world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes
Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm;
An endless tapestry the past has women drapes
The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.
The surface of dreams is broken,
The picture of the past is shaken and scattered.
Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway, and I am woken
From the dreams that the distance flattered.
Along the railway, active figures of men.
They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they move
Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy world.
Here in the subtle, rounded flesh
Beats the active ecstasy.
In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer,
The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving through the mesh
Of men, vibrating in ecstasy through the rounded flesh.
Oh my boys, bending over your books,
In you is trembling and fusing
The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a generation:
And I watch to see the Creator, the power that patterns the dream.
The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned, and sure,
But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously,
Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff,
Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern, shaping and shapen?
Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning:
Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams reflected on the molten metal of dreams,
Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them all as a heart-beat moves the blood,
Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working,
Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile features.
Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen Shaper,
The power of the melting, fusing Force—heat, light, all in one,
Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling and shaping the dream in the flesh,
As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom.
Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that I am life!
Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouring concentration
Swelling mankind like one bud to bring forth the fruit of a dream,
Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of the sweep of the impulse of life,
And watching the great Thing labouring through the whole round flesh of the world;
And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of the coming dream,
As it quickens within the labouring, white-hot metal,
Catch the scent and the colour of the coming dream,
Then to fall back exhausted into the unconscious, molten life!
Scheme | ABAB CDCD XXE FGHFF XICJ XGXC IXXIX HCFX KCJKEJXJK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111010101101 110100110101 110100011101 0111101011101 01011110 010101110010 101010111010101110 101101010 0101101011 1101011011111 11010100101101 10010101 1010100 001010111110 00101011001010101 11100010010101 111101011 011100010 0010101101110010 01111001001011001 0111100011101 10111100101000 01011111111011 111100010100101001 1011101010110 111110111101010101011 101111001111011101 10010101010010 100100111001010 101100001010011 010101010111101 10100100011001001001 11101010110 10100100101001111 101001010111010 101111111101101 101011001011101101011 010011110111101 010110110110101 111001011110 10100110101 111101001010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 2,421 |
Words | 428 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 3, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 9 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 46 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 214 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 47 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:08 min read
- 133 Views
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"Dreams Nascent" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7832/dreams-nascent>.
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