Analysis of The Bittersweet Love Of The Dead
Joe Strickland 1986 (Hobbysville, SC)
Everyone will love you
When you're sleeping
Six feet in the earth,
Or at least that's what they say.
But I've come to realize,
There's no love
Like the dead man's love.
It's when you're gone,
Surrounded by smoke
And soil,
That they muster up their praise,
Clutching their hearts
With bittersweet remorse.
Suddenly, you become the hero,
The one they see
Through tear-soaked glasses,
As if death grants them
The gift of clear sight.
Everyone will love you
When you're sleeping
Six feet in the earth.
But what good is love
When it's too late?
What solace can be found
In the words spoken
When the ears
They were meant for
Are deaf to their sound?
We are but ghosts,
Fading into the annals of memory.
The living find comfort
In their illusions,
Constructing narratives
To fit their needs,
But we, the departed,
We wallow in our forgotten dreams,
Forever yearning for a love
That could have been,
That should have been.
Scheme | ABCdeffghijklmnopqABCfrstuvswnxyz1 2 3 f4 4 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111 1110 11001 1111111 111110 111 10111 1111 01011 01 1110111 1011 11001 100101010 0111 11110 11111 01111 10111 1110 11001 11111 1111 110111 00110 101 1011 11111 1111 10010101100 010110 01010 010100 1111 110010 1100100101 01010101 1111 1111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 951 |
Words | 201 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 39 |
Lines Amount | 39 |
Letters per line (avg) | 18 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 718 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 163 |
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"The Bittersweet Love Of The Dead " Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/163006/the-bittersweet-love-of-the-dead%C2%A0>.
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