Analysis of The Wilderness
Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn
Put off the summer’s languor with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,
To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.
Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.
Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us,
There’s an old song calling us to come!
Come away! come away!—for the scenes we leave behind us
Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that’s young forever;
And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,
That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains.
The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us,
And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years;
But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us
In the strangeness of home-coming, and a woman’s waiting eyes.
Come away! come away! there is nothing now to cheer us—
Nothing now to comfort us, but love’s road home:—
Over there beyond the darkness there’s a window gleams to greet us,
And a warm hearth waits for us within.
Come away! come away!—or the roving-fiend will hold us,
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring:
There are no men yet may leave him when his hands are clutched upon them,
There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother.
So we’ll be up and on the way, and the less we boast the better
For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know:—
The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it,
And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.
Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us—
Frozen men that mock us with a wild, hard laugh
That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes,
And the long fall wind on the lake.
Scheme | ABXCDXEX XXCD CBXXCXCX CXCX CXXBBEXX CXAX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10110110101010 00101110111101110 10101010010101 10111111110111111 11101110110101110 1101011011111 10101111110111010 101110100011101 10110111111010 10111110111 1010101000111011 111110111 10110110111011 1101011100111010 0010101110101011 1101011110101010 0111111111111011 001110101111101 11111010111101111 00101110001101 10110111101111 10111011111 1010101010101111 001111101 10110110101111 0111111110111010 1111111111111011 11111110011111110 1111010100111010 101011110011111 011101110111111 001110111011111 10110111111011 10111110111 11010100101010 00111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 2,254 |
Words | 438 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 8, 4, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 48 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 287 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 72 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:11 min read
- 79 Views
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"The Wilderness" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10078/the-wilderness>.
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