Analysis of First Love.
Charles Stuart Calverley 1831 (Martley) – 1884
O my earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!
Will a swallow - or a swift, or some bird -
Fly to her and say, I love her still?
Say my life's a desert drear and arid,
To its one green spot I aye recur:
Never, never - although three times married -
Have I cared a jot for aught but her.
No, mine own! though early forced to leave you,
Still my heart was there where first we met;
In those "Lodgings with an ample sea-view,"
Which were, forty years ago, "To Let."
There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest
Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun, - who (so they say) beholdest
Everything, - hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er.
There she sat - so near me, yet remoter
Than a star - a blue-eyed bashful imp:
On her lap she held a happy bloater,
'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.
And I loved her, and our troth we plighted
On the morrow by the shingly shore:
In a fortnight to be disunited
By a bitter fate for evermore.
O my own, my beautiful, my blue eyed!
To be young once more, and bite my thumb
At the world and all its cares with you, I'd
Give no inconsiderable sum.
Hand in hand we tramp'd the golden seaweed,
Soon as o'er the gray cliff peep'd the dawn:
Side by side, when came the hour for tea, we'd
Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn:-
Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper,
That sweet mite with whom I loved to play?
Is she girt with babes that whine and whimper,
That bright being who was always gay?
Yes - she has at least a dozen wee things!
Yes - I see her darning corduroys,
Scouring floors, and setting out the tea-things,
For a howling herd of hungry boys,
In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil!
But at intervals she thinks, I know,
Of those days which we, afar from turmoil,
Spent together forty years ago.
O my earliest love, still unforgotten,
With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue!
Never, somehow, could I seem to cotton
To another as I did to you!
Scheme | ABAB XCDC EFEF XGAG CHCH AIAI JKJK DLDL CMCM NNNX OPOP LEXE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (92%) |
Metre | 11100111110 111011101 1010101111 110011101 1110101010 111111101 101011110 111011110 1111101111 111111111 0110111011 101010111 1110110110 101010111 11111111 10111111 11111111 101011101 101110101 101011101 0110010111 10101011 001111 10101110 1111100111 111110111 1010111111 1111 101110101 1110011101 11111010111 101010101 1110101010 111111111 1111111010 11101111 1111101011 111011 10010101011 101011101 0011111011 111001111 111110111 101010101 11100111 11111101 101111110 101011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,914 |
Words | 390 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 121 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:59 min read
- 5 Views
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"First Love." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/54913/first-love.>.
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