Analysis of When You Wake In Your Crib
William Ernest Henley 1849 (Gloucester) – 1903 (Woking)
When you wake in your crib,
You, an inch of experience -
Vaulted about
With the wonder of darkness;
Wailing and striving
To reach from your feebleness
Something you feel
Will be good to and cherish you,
Something you know
And can rest upon blindly:
O, then a hand
(Your mother's, your mother's!)
By the fall of its fingers
All knowledge, all power to you,
Out of the dreary,
Discouraging strangenesses
Comes to and masters you,
Takes you, and lovingly
Woos you and soothes you
Back, as you cling to it,
Back to some comforting
Corner of sleep.
So you wake in your bed,
Having lived, having loved;
But the shadows are there,
And the world and its kingdoms
Incredibly faded;
And you group through the Terror
Above you and under
For the light, for the warmth,
The assurance of life;
But the blasts are ice-born,
And your heart is nigh burst
With the weight of the gloom
And the stress of your strangled
And desperate endeavour:
Sudden a hand -
Mother, O Mother! -
God at His best to you,
Out of the roaring,
Impossible silences,
Falls on and urges you,
Mightily, tenderly,
Forth, as you clutch at it,
Forth to the infinite
Peace of the Grave.
Scheme | XAXXBAXCXDEFFCDACDCGBX XXXXXHHXXXXXXHEHCBXCDGXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111011 11110100 1001 1010110 10010 11111 1011 11110101 1011 0110110 1101 110110 1011110 11011011 11010 01001 110101 110100 11011 111111 111100 1011 111011 101101 10111 0010110 010010 0111010 011010 101101 001011 101111 011111 101101 0011110 010010 1001 10110 111111 11010 0100100 110101 100100 111111 110100 1101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,102 |
Words | 211 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 22, 24 |
Lines Amount | 46 |
Letters per line (avg) | 19 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 444 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 104 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:03 min read
- 60 Views
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"When You Wake In Your Crib" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/40589/when-you-wake-in-your-crib>.
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