Analysis of Winter Sleep
Elinor Morton Wylie 1885 (Somerville, New Jersey) – 1928 (New York City, New York)
When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone on steel,
When stone turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.
Little birds like bubbles of glass
Fly to other Americas,
Birds as bright as sparkles of wine
Fly in the nite to the Argentine,
Birds of azure and flame-birds go
To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:
They chase the sun, they follow the heat,
It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet!
It's not with them that I'd love to be,
But under the roots of the balsam tree.
Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr
Is lined within with the finest fur,
So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house
Of every squirrel and mole and mouse
Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather,
Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together
With balsam and juniper, dry and curled,
Sweeter than anything else in the world.
O what a warm and darksome nest
Where the wildest things are hidden to rest!
It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep,
Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!
Scheme | AABBCCDD XXXXEEFFGG HHIIHHJJ KKLL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 10110101 1111111 111100111 01111101 10110111 11101001 1011100101 1111110101 10111011 11100100 11111011 10011010 11100111 101001110 110111001 1110111111 111111111 1100110101 110111 110110101 10101111 1100100101 11111110 10111010 1100100101 101101001 1101011 1010111011 111111101 1110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,144 |
Words | 210 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 10, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 222 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 52 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:04 min read
- 85 Views
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"Winter Sleep" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10191/winter-sleep>.
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