Analysis of Sleeping Together

Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)



Sleeping together... how tired you were...
How warm our room... how the firelight spread
On walls and ceiling and great white bed!
We spoke in whispers as children do,
And now it was I--and then it was you
Slept a moment, to wake--"My dear,
I'm not at all sleepy," one of us said....

Was it a thousand years ago?
I woke in your arms--you were sound asleep--
And heard the pattering sound of sheep.
Softly I slipped to the floor and crept
To the curtained window, then, while you slept,
I watched the sheep pass by in the snow.

O flock of thoughts with their shepherd Fear
Shivering, desolate, out in the cold,
That entered into my heart to fold!

A thousand years... was it yesterday
When we two children of far away,
Clinging close in the darkness, lay
Sleeping together?... How tired you were....


Scheme Abbccdb effgge dhh iiiA
Poetic Form Etheree  (25%)
Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 1001011010 111011011 110100111 110101101 0111101111 10101111 1111101111 11010101 1101110101 0101111 101110101 101101111 110111001 111111101 1001001001 110011111 01011110 111101101 10100101 1001011010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 786
Words 148
Sentences 13
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 7, 6, 3, 4
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 150
Words per stanza (avg) 36
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
47

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. more…

All Katherine Mansfield poems | Katherine Mansfield Books

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