Analysis of Self-pity

David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)



I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.


Scheme ABCB
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Simple 4-line
Metre 1101011 10101 01111101101 011010110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 140
Words 28
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 4
Lines Amount 4
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 106
Words per stanza (avg) 26
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

8 sec read
466

David Herbert Lawrence

David Herbert Lawrence was an English writer and poet. His collected works represent, among other things, an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. Lawrence's writing explores issues such as sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity, and instinct. Lawrence's opinions earned him many enemies and he endured official persecution, censorship, and misrepresentation of his creative work throughout the second half of his life, much of which he spent in a voluntary exile he called his "savage pilgrimage". At the time of his death, his public reputation was that of a pornographer who had wasted his considerable talents. E. M. Forster, in an obituary notice, challenged this widely held view, describing him as "the greatest imaginative novelist of our generation." Later, the literary critic F. R. Leavis championed both his artistic integrity and his moral seriousness. more…

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