Explication Thoughts on My Sick bed
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The Soul's Battle for Life during Sickness
An Explication of "Thoughts on My Sick-bed" by Dorothy Wordsworth
Form:
"Thoughts on My Sick-bed" is a traditional verse poem of thirteen four-line stanzas.
Rhyme Scheme:
The rhyme scheme begins and concludes with A-B-C-B. However, in stanzas five and eight the rhyme scheme changes to A-B-A-B. I think that Wordsworth changed the rhyme schemed in those particular stanzas to emphasize her feelings and draw her readers further into the poem. She wants her readers to empathize with her.
Rhythm:
And has the remnant of my life
Been pilfered of this sunny Spring?
And have its own preclusive sounds
Touched in my heart no echoing string?
Ah! say not so-the hidden life
Couchant within this feeble frame
Hath been enriched by kindred gifts,
That, undesired, unsought-for, came
With joyful heart in youthful days
When fresh each season in its Round
I welcomed the earliest Celandine
Glittering upon the mossy ground;
With busy eyes I pierced the lane
In quest of known and unknown things,
-The primrose a lamp on its fortress rock,
The silent butterfly spreading its wings,
The violet betrayed by its noiseless breath,
The daffodil dancing in the breeze,
The caroling thrush, on his naked perch,
Towering above the budding trees.
Our cottage-hearth no longer our home,
Companions of Nature were we,
The Stirring, the Still, the Loquacious, the Mute-
To all we gave our sympathy...