Analysis of Christmas
Edith Nesbit 1858 (Kennington, Surrey ) – 1924 (New Romney, Kent)
WITH garlands to grace it, with laughter to greet it,
Christmas is here, holly-red and snow-white,
Hung round with quaint legends, and old-as-life stories
Of mystical beauty and lifelong delight;
With dreams of the Christ-child, with Santa Claus fables,
Without doubts to trouble or questions to break
The absolute faith in the triumph of goodness,
In God and in nature on guard for its sake;
Without fear of death, with no memories of grief,
Believing life clear as our cloudless belief;
What wonder if rose-coloured Christmas appear
As the happiest day of our happy child year?
With the swiftness of thought, with the spring's incompleteness,
Childhood has passed, and its place is filled up;
Hope suns our youth into midsummer sweetness,
And the roses of love wreathe our life's golden cup.
We shall do--we shall dare--and our faith has no limit,
Wrong must go down 'neath the sword of the right
And life is so joyous, and may be so glorious,
And day looks so long, and so distant the night.
We love--there are chances--and if we should meet
The woman who holds all our heart at her feet
At Christmas--would that not make Christmas more dear
Than all other days of our love-lightened year?
With the sadness of tears, with the speed of the swallow,
Youth has gone by, and its hope and its faith;
Love has grown into grief, and remembrance is anguish,
And down the dim years sound the footsteps of death.
There sit at our feast (for we still hold our revels)
The phantom of hope and the spectre of truth.
This life we believed in--how has it rewarded
The passionate faith of our long-ago youth?
Our hearth is deserted--our Christmas Day seems
But the ghost of a day from a lifetime of dreams.
Oh, lost voices that call us--we hear you--we hear!
Oh, most desolate day of our desolate year!
Scheme | XABACDEDFFGG BHEHXAEAIIGG XXXXCJXJKKXG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111110111 1011101011 111110011110 11001001101 111011110110 01111011011 01010010110 01001011111 011111110011 010111101001 11011101001 1010011101011 1010111011 111011111 111010111010 0010111101101 11111101011110 1111101101 0111100111100 01111011001 11111001111 010111101101 11011111011 111011101101 1010111011010 1111011011 1110110010110 0101110111 11110111111010 01011001011 111010111010 010011101011 1011010101011 10110110111 111011111111 1110011101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,797 |
Words | 317 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 12, 12 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 39 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 468 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 105 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 17, 2023
- 1:35 min read
- 127 Views
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"Christmas" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/8801/christmas>.
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