Analysis of Only a Matter of Time
Christopher Morley 1890 (Haverford) – 1957
DOWN-SLIPPING Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream,
Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon
Across your eager flow. So you shall stay,
Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be.
Your troubled fluency, your running gleam
Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear:
The while I lie and search your glassy pool
Where, gently coiling in their lazy round,
Unseparable minutes drift and swim,
Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see
How many crystal bubbles of slack Time
The mind can hold and cherish in one Now!
Now, for one concious vacancy of sense,
The stream is gathered in a depening pond,
Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp
Correct reflection of the standing scene
The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest,
And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold,
Your liquid notes, imperishable Time.
It cannot be. The runnel slips away:
The clear smooth downward sluice begins again,
More brightly slanting for that trembling pause,
Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease
As when a sonnet flashes on the mind,
Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone.
Scheme | AXBCAXXXXCDX XXXXXXD BXXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1101110101 110101101 0111011111 1001111101 1101001101 1101010101 0111011101 110101101 110101 1001010111 1101010111 0111010011 111110011 011100011 1011010101 0101010101 0111010111 0111000101 110111 110101101 0111010101 11010111001 1001110101 1101010101 101110011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,079 |
Words | 188 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 7, 6 |
Lines Amount | 25 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 284 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 62 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 55 Views
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