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 Views
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"I Wonder What It Feels Like to be Drowned?" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31132/i-wonder-what-it-feels-like-to-be-drowned%3F>.
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