Analysis of A London Thoroughfare. 2 A.M.

Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)



They have watered the street,
It shines in the glare of lamps,
Cold, white lamps,
And lies
Like a slow-moving river,
Barred with silver and black.
Cabs go down it,
One,
And then another,
Between them I hear the shuffling of feet.
Tramps doze on the window-ledges,
Night-walkers pass along the sidewalks.
The city is squalid and sinister,
With the silver-barred street in the midst,
Slow-moving,
A river leading nowhere.

Opposite my window,
The moon cuts,
Clear and round,
Through the plum-coloured night.
She cannot light the city:
It is too bright.
It has white lamps,
And glitters coldly.

I stand in the window and watch the
 moon.
She is thin and lustreless,
But I love her.
I know the moon,
And this is an alien city.


Scheme ABBXCXXXCAXXCXXX XXXDEDBE XFBCFE
Poetic Form Tetractys  (43%)
Etheree  (20%)
Metre 111001 1100111 111 01 1011010 111001 1111 1 01010 0111101011 11101010 11010101 0101100100 101011001 110 010101 100110 011 101 101101 1101010 1111 1111 01010 110010010 1 11101 1110 1101 011110010
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 703
Words 129
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 16, 8, 6
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 19
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 186
Words per stanza (avg) 42
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 19, 2023

38 sec read
167

Amy Lowell

Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. more…

All Amy Lowell poems | Amy Lowell Books

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