Analysis of Town and Country
Rupert Brooke 1887 (Rugby) – 1915 (Aegean Sea)
Here, where love's stuff is body, arm and side
Are stabbing-sweet 'gainst chair and lamp and wall.
In every touch more intimate meanings hide;
And flaming brains are the white heart of all.
Here, million pulses to one centre beat:
Closed in by men's vast friendliness, alone,
Two can be drunk with solitude, and meet
On the sheer point where sense with knowing's one.
Here the green-purple clanging royal night,
And the straight lines and silent walls of town,
And roar, and glare, and dust, and myriad white
Undying passers, pinnacle and crown
Intensest heavens between close-lying faces
By the lamp's airless fierce ecstatic fire;
And we've found love in little hidden places,
Under great shades, between the mist and mire.
Stay! though the woods are quiet, and you've heard
Night creep along the hedges. Never go
Where tangled foliage shrouds the crying bird,
And the remote winds sigh, and waters flow!
Lest -- as our words fall dumb on windless noons,
Or hearts grow hushed and solitary, beneath
Unheeding stars and unfamiliar moons,
Or boughs bend over, close and quiet as death, --
Unconscious and unpassionate and still,
Cloud-like we lean and stare as bright leaves stare,
And gradually along the stranger hill
Our unwalled loves thin out on vacuous air,
And suddenly there's no meaning in our kiss,
And your lit upward face grows, where we lie,
Lonelier and dreadfuller than sunlight is,
And dumb and mad and eyeless like the sky.
Scheme | ABAB CXCX DEDE FXFX GHGH IXIX JKJK XLXL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (63%) |
Metre | 1111110101 1101110101 010011100101 0101101111 1101011101 1011110001 111111001 101111111 1011010101 0011010111 01010101001 0101010001 1100111010 10110101010 01110101010 1011010101 1101110011 1101010101 1101010101 0001110101 1110111111 1111010001 1100101 11110101011 100101 1111011111 01000010101 10111111001 010011100101 0111011111 101111 0101010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,434 |
Words | 246 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 143 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 96 Views
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"Town and Country" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33758/town-and-country>.
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