Analysis of Consolation
William Taylor Collins 1721 (Sussex) – 1759 (Sussex)
How agreeable it is not to be touring Italy this summer,
wandering her cities and ascending her torrid hilltowns.
How much better to cruise these local, familiar streets,
fully grasping the meaning of every roadsign and billboard
and all the sudden hand gestures of my compatriots.
There are no abbeys here, no crumbling frescoes or famous
domes and there is no need to memorize a succession
of kings or tour the dripping corners of a dungeon.
No need to stand around a sarcophagus, see Napoleon's
little bed on Elba, or view the bones of a saint under glass.
How much better to command the simple precinct of home
than be dwarfed by pillar, arch, and basilica.
Why hide my head in phrase books and wrinkled maps?
Why feed scenery into a hungry, one-eyes camera
eager to eat the world one monument at a time?
Instead of slouching in a café ignorant of the word for ice,
I will head down to the coffee shop and the waitress
known as Dot. I will slide into the flow of the morning
paper, all language barriers down,
rivers of idiom running freely, eggs over easy on the way.
And after breakfast, I will not have to find someone
willing to photograph me with my arm around the owner.
I will not puzzle over the bill or record in a journal
what I had to eat and how the sun came in the window.
It is enough to climb back into the car
as if it were the great car of English itself
and sounding my loud vernacular horn, speed off
down a road that will never lead to Rome, not even Bologna.
Scheme | ABBXB BCCBB XDBDX BBXXX CAXXX XXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001111110100110 10001000100101 1110111100101 10100101100101 01010110110100 11111110010110 1011111100010 1111010101010 1111010010010100 101111101101101 1110101010111 111110100100 11110110101 111000101011100 1011011100101 0111000110010111 1111101010010 11111101011010 101101001 101100101011010101 010101111111 10110111101010 1111010011010010 11111010110010 11011110101 111001111001 010110100111 1011110111110010 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,465 |
Words | 281 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 3 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 42 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 196 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 47 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:24 min read
- 66 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Consolation" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/41714/consolation>.
Discuss this William Taylor Collins poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In