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The Full Text of “Rooms”
1I remember rooms that have had their part
2 In the steady slowing down of the heart.
3The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,
4The little damp room with the seaweed smell,
5And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide—
6 Rooms where for good or for ill—things died.
7But there is the room where we (two) lie dead,
8Though every morning we seem to wake and might just as well seem to sleep again
9 As we shall somewhere in the other quieter, dustier bed
10 Out there in the sun—in the rain.
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“Rooms” Introduction
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“Rooms” Summary
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“Rooms” Themes
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The Unlived Life
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The Trap of Unhappiness
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Rooms”
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Lines 1-2
I remember rooms that have had their part
In the steady slowing down of the heart. -
Lines 3-5
The room in Paris, the room at Geneva,
The little damp room with the seaweed smell,
And that ceaseless maddening sound of the tide— -
Line 6
Rooms where for good or for ill—things died.
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Lines 7-8
But there is the room where we (two) lie dead,
Though every morning we seem to wake and might just as well seem to sleep again -
Lines 9-10
As we shall somewhere in the other quieter, dustier bed
Out there in the sun—in the rain.
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“Rooms” Symbols
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Rooms
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The Sea
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“Rooms” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Parallelism
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Repetition
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Imagery
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Alliteration
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Metaphor
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Caesura
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Enjambment
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“Rooms” Vocabulary
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- Ill
- Geneva
- Ceaseless
Ill-
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Rooms”
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Form
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Meter
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Rhyme Scheme
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“Rooms” Speaker
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“Rooms” Setting
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Literary and Historical Context of “Rooms”
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More “Rooms” Resources
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External Resources
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Charlotte Mew's Life and Work — A biography of the poet at the Poetry Foundation.
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More About the Poet — A profile of Mew at the Modernist Archives Publishing Project.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of "Rooms."
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More by Mew — Browse original editions of Mew's work at the Internet Archive.
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A Meditation on Mew and More — An essay by Eavan Boland that reflects on Mew's life and "the definitions of a poet."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Charlotte Mew
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