Analysis of Suburb
Harold Monro 1879 (Brussels) – 1932
Dull and hard the low wind creaks
Among the rustling pampas plumes.
Drearily the year consumes
Its fifty-two insipid weeks.
Most of the grey-green meadowland
Was sold in parsimonious lots;
The dingy houses stand
Pressed by some stout contractor's hand
Tightly together in their plots.
Through builded banks the sullen river
Gropes, where its houses crouch and shiver.
Over the bridge the tyrant train
Shrieks, and emerges on the plain.
In all the better gardens you may pass,
(Product of many careful Saturdays),
Large red geraniums and tall pampas grass
Adorn the plots and mark the gravelled ways.
Sometimes in the background may be seen
A private summer-house in white or green.
Here on warm nights the daughter brings
Her vacillating clerk,
To talk of small exciting things
And touch his fingers through the dark.
He, in the uncomfortable breach
Between her trilling laughters,
Promises, in halting speech,
Hopeless immense Hereafters.
She trembles like the pampas plumes.
Her strained lips haggle. He assumes
The serious quest. . .
Now as the train is whistling past
He takes her in his arms at last.
It's done. She blushes at his side
Across the lawn-a bride, a bride.
The stout contractor will design,
The lazy laborers will prepare,
Another villa on the line;
In the little garden-square
Pampas grass will rustle there.
Scheme | AAAA BABBA CCDD AAAA EEAXAX FAFAAAX GG HH IJIJJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1010111 01010101 10101 110111 11011101 11001001 010101 1111101 10010011 11101010 111101010 10010101 10010101 0101010111 1011010100 11010001101 010101011 01001111 0101010111 11110101 01001 11110101 01110101 100010001 010101 1000101 10011 1110101 01110101 01001 11011101 11001111 11110111 01010101 0110101 010100101 01010101 0010101 1011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,301 |
Words | 220 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 5, 4, 4, 6, 7, 2, 2, 5 |
Lines Amount | 39 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 119 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 60 Views
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"Suburb" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/16859/suburb>.
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