Girl of Fifteen
James Weldon Johnson 1871 (Jacksonville) – 1938 (Wiscasset)
Girl of fifteen,
I see you each morning from my window
As you pass on your way to school.
I do more than see, I watch you.
I furtively draw the curtain aside.
And my heart leaps through my eyes
And follows you down the street;
Leaving me behind, half-hid
And wholly ashamed.
What holds me back,
Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,
But my forty years beyond your fifteen?
Girl of fifteen, as you pass
There passes, too, a lightning flash of time
In which you lift those forty summers off my head,
And take those forty winters out of my heart.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 31 sec read
- 38 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AXXXXXXXB XBAXXXX |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 547 |
Words | 106 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 7 |
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"Girl of Fifteen" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/20709/girl-of-fifteen>.
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