Analysis of The History of a Minute
Alice Duer Miller 1874 (New York) – 1942 (New York)
I saw a lady on the stair,
And she was, oh, so strangely fair,
With a knot of butter-colored hair,
And a waiting, listening, wondering air.
She was tall as a lady ought to be,
And down she looked and smiled at me.
Her eyes were queerly brightly blue
As the bit of sky that last shines through
The gathering clouds, oppressive, gray,
On a chilly windy Autumn day.
There she paused on the stairs and smiled
Like a child who sees another child
With whom it would dearly like to play
If it only could get its nurse away.
And I know not what divine surmise.
Leapt up like fire in my eyes,
But I know her smiling suddenly stopped,
And a curtain between us blankly dropped,
And she passed me by as if I were
A man invisible to her.
Scheme | AAAABBCCDDEEDDFFGGHH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11010101 01111101 101110101 00101001001 1111010111 01110111 0101101 101111111 010010101 101010101 11110101 101110101 111110111 1110111101 011110101 11110011 1110101001 0010011101 011111110 01010010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 715 |
Words | 144 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 562 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 142 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 43 sec read
- 82 Views
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"The History of a Minute" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1479/the-history-of-a-minute>.
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