Analysis of Then I Would Love You

Joseph Seamon Cotter 1861 (Louisville) – 1949



Were you to come,
With your clear, gray eyes
As calmly placid as, in summer's heat,
At noontide lie the sultry skies;
With your dark, brown hair
As smoothly quiet as the leaves
When stirs no cooling breath of air;
And shorn of smile, your full, red lips
Prest firmly close as the chaliced bud,
Before the nectar-quaffing bee ere sips;
I would not know you.
I would not love you.

But should you come
With your love-bright eyes
Dancing gaily as, on summer's eve,
The stars adown the Western skies;
With your hair, wind-caught
And circled round your shining face
In fashion which no hand ere wrought;
And your full, red lips poised saucily,
As the slender moon midst an hundred stars,
And held aloof in daring taunt to me,
Then I would know you,
Then I would love you.


Scheme ABXBCXCDXDEE ABXBXXXXXXEE
Poetic Form
Metre 0111 11111 1101010101 1110101 11111 11010101 11110111 01111111 11011011 010101111 11111 11111 1111 11111 101011101 0110101 11111 01011101 01011111 0111111 1010111101 0101010111 11111 11111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 772
Words 143
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 12, 12
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 298
Words per stanza (avg) 71
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
80

Joseph Seamon Cotter

Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr. was an American playwright, author and poet from Louisville, Kentucky most remembered for his posthumously published one-act play On The Fields of France in addition to numerous volumes of poetry. more…

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