Analysis of The Missed Train

Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)



How I was caught
Hieing home, after days of allure,
And driven to an inn—small, obscure—
At the junction, fret-fraught!

How civil my face
To get them to chamber me there—
A roof I had passed scarce aware
That it stood at the place.

And how all the night
I had dreams of the unwitting cause
Of my lodgment. How lonely I was;
How consoled by her sprite!

Thus onetime to me
Dim wastes of dead years bar away
Then from now! But the like haps to-day
To young lovers, may be.

Years, years as gray seas,
Truly, stretch now between! Less and less
Shrink the visions then great in me.—Yes,
Then in me. Now in these.


Scheme XAAX BCCB DEED FGGF HIIH
Poetic Form Quatrain  (80%)
Etheree  (35%)
Tetractys  (25%)
Metre 1111 11101101 010111101 101011 11011 11111011 01111101 111101 01101 111100101 11111011 101101 11111 11111101 111101111 111011 11111 101101101 101011011 101101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 603
Words 120
Sentences 11
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 93
Words per stanza (avg) 23
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 02, 2023

36 sec read
100

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, was not a Scottish Minister, not a Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland nor a Professor of Eccesiastical History at Edinburgh University. more…

All Thomas Hardy poems | Thomas Hardy Books

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