Analysis of To a poetess on the 1812 Newbury Train



What did they mean, those eyes of hers?
Deep, wistful, wise beyond her years.
There were quiet tears there, amid the yell
And jangle of the mobile phones;
But cast away that spell of melancholy,
Serenely far away she was
In thoughtful, chaste and honest reverie.
She had 'Station Island' on her lap,
And was writing in it. Notes? Or her own verse?
Her answer to the good Lord’s wild
Challenge to feeble frame and crumbling bones?

I said it, briefly, when I reached my stop,
‘I too love Heaney’ - and she smiled.

Young Lady, with that gracious glance
You claimed at once
A traveller's ancient heart;
And, could you but see,
You there became a Muse to me.


Scheme AAXBCXCXXDB XD XXXCC
Poetic Form
Metre 11111110 11010101 1010110101 01010101 1101111100 010010111 0101010100 111010101 01100111011 01010111 10110101001 1111011111 11110011 11011101 1111 01101 01111 11010111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 642
Words 120
Sentences 9
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 11, 2, 5
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 168
Words per stanza (avg) 40
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Submitted on May 01, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

36 sec read
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Lindsay George Hall

British born and brought up, classically educated.Apart from the Greek and Latin Classics, my special enthusiasms are English and German romantic poetry, but also (outwith that loop) the spare New Englander Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins. My own stuff here is largely 'retro', but I make no apology for that. Poetry, to be poetry, needs discipline.I am happy to review (or preview) poems by request (lindsayxix@gmail.com). more…

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    From which London landmark did Wordsworth celebrate the view in his poem beginning: "Earth has not any thing to show more fair..."
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    C The Tower of London
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