Analysis of To a Friend

Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)



I ask but one thing of you, only one,
That always you will be my dream of you;
That never shall I wake to find untrue
All this I have believed and rested on,
Forever vanished, like a vision gone
Out into the night. Alas, how few
There are who strike in us a chord we knew
Existed, but so seldom heard its tone
We tremble at the half-forgotten sound.
The world is full of rude awakenings
And heaven-born castles shattered to the ground,
Yet still our human longing vainly clings
To a belief in beauty through all wrongs.
O stay your hand, and leave my heart its songs!


Scheme ABBCDBBEFGFGGG
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111101 111111111 1101111101 1111010101 0101010101 101010111 1111010111 0101110111 1101010101 0111111 01011010101 11101010101 1001010111 1111011111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 575
Words 111
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 444
Words per stanza (avg) 109
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 24, 2023

33 sec read
291

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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