Analysis of Night in the Old Home
Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)
When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast,
And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me,
And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,
My perished people who housed them here come back to me.
They come and seat them around in their mouldy places,
Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness,
A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces,
And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness.
'Do you uphold me, lingering and languishing here,
A pale late plant of your once strong stock?' I say to them;
'A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere,
An on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them?'
'--O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not thus:
Take of Life what it grants, without question!' they answer me seemingly.
'Enjoy, suffer, wait: spread the table here freely like us,
And, satisfied, placid, unfretting, watch Time away beamingly!'
Scheme | ABAB CDCC XEXE DBDX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 101010100101 011111010111 01101001011111 1101011111111 1101101011010 10110011011100 0111011110 00010110101 1101110001001 0111111111111 0101101011001 1111111110100111 1110111010111 11111101101101100 01101101011011 01010111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 936 |
Words | 170 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 46 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 182 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 41 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 114 Views
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