Analysis of I Wonder What It Feels Like to be Drowned?

Robert Graves 1895 (Wimbledon) – 1985 (Deià)



Look at my knees,
That island rising from the steamy seas!
The candles a tall lightship; my two hands
Are boats and barges anchored to the sands,
With mighty cliffs all round;
They’re full of wine and riches from far lands….
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?

I can make caves,
By lifting up the island and huge waves
And storms, and then with head and ears well under
Blow bubbles with a monstrous roar like thunder,
A bull-of-Bashan sound.
The seas run high and the boats split asunder….
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?

The thin soap slips
And slithers like a shark under the ships.
My toes are on the soap-dish—that’s the effect
Of my huge storms; an iron steamer’s wrecked.
The soap slides round and round;
He’s biting the old sailors, I expect….
I wonder what it feels like to be drowned?


Scheme aabbcbC ddeeceC ffggcgC
Poetic Form
Metre 1111 1101010101 010011111 1101010101 110111 1111010111 1101111111 1111 1101010011 01011101110 11010101110 01111 01110011010 1101111111 0111 011011001 11110111001 1111110101 011101 1100110101 1101111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 830
Words 153
Sentences 11
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 7, 7, 7
Lines Amount 21
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 210
Words per stanza (avg) 50
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 06, 2023

45 sec read
136

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, scholar/translator/writer of antiquity specializing in Classical Greece and Rome, novelist and soldier in World War One. more…

All Robert Graves poems | Robert Graves Books

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