Analysis of Poem In October
Dylan Thomas 1914 (Swansea) – 1953 (Greenwich Village)
It was my thirtieth year to heaven
Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood
And the mussel pooled and the heron
Priested shore
The morning beckon
With water praying and call of seagull and rook
And the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
Myself to set foot
That second
In the still sleeping town and set forth.
My birthday began with the water-
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road
Over the border
And the gates
Of the town closed as the town awoke.
A springful of larks in a rolling
Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling
Blackbirds and the sun of October
Summery
On the hill's shoulder,
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly
Come in the morning where I wandered and listened
To the rain wringing
Wind blow cold
In the wood faraway under me.
Pale rain over the dwindling harbour
And over the sea wet church the size of a snail
With its horns through mist and the castle
Brown as owls
But all the gardens
Of spring and summer were blooming in the tall tales
Beyond the border and under the lark full cloud.
There could I marvel
My birthday
Away but the weather turned around.
It turned away from the blithe country
And down the other air and the blue altered sky
Streamed again a wonder of summer
With apples
Pears and red currants
And I saw in the turning so clearly a child's
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sun light
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice told fields of infancy
That his tears burned my cheeks and his heart moved in mine.
These were the woods the river and sea
Where a boy
In the listening
Summertime of the dead whispered the truth of his joy
To the trees and the stones and the fish in the tide.
And the mystery
Sang alive
Still in the water and singingbirds.
And there could I marvel my birthday
Away but the weather turned around. And the true
Joy of the long dead child sang burning
In the sun.
It was my thirtieth
Year to heaven stood there then in the summer noon
Though the town below lay leaved with October blood.
O may my heart's truth
Still be sung
On this high hill in a year's turning.
Scheme | AXABAXXXAX CXDXXXXCXX EECBCFXEXF CXGXXXXGHX FXCIDXCIXD FXFJEJXFXD HXEAXXXXXE |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111001110 11110110011 001010010 11 01010 11010011101 001110110111 1111 110 001101011 11011010 100110111011 010100110 011 01010 010100101111 110010111101 10010 001 101110101 01110010 10011010110 100011010 1 10110 101100110100 100101110010 10110 111 001101101 1110010010 010011101101 111110010 111 11010 110100100011 010100100111 11110 11 011010101 110110110 010101001101 101010110 110 1011 011001011001 010101111110 10100 111 00101011 001111100 111111011101 100101001 101 00100 101011001111 101001001001 00100 101 1001001 01111011 011010101001 110111110 001 111100 111011100101 101011110101 11111 111 111100110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,598 |
Words | 456 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 |
Lines Amount | 70 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 264 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 63 |
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"Poem In October" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/113677/poem-in-october>.
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