Analysis of How Long?
Emma Lazarus 1849 (New York City) – 1887 (New York City)
How long, and yet how long,
Our leaders will we hail from over seas,
Master and kings from feudal monarchies,
And mock their ancient song
With echoes weak of foreign melodies?
That distant isle mist-wreathed,
Mantled in unimaginable green,
Too long hath been our mistress and our queen.
Our fathers have bequeathed
Too deep a love for her, our hearts within.
She made the whole world ring
With the brave exploits of her children strong,
And with the matchless music of her song.
Too late, too late we cling
To alien legends, and their strains prolong.
This fresh young world I see,
With heroes, cities, legends of her own;
With a new race of men, and overblown
By winds from sea to sea,
Decked with the majesty of every zone.
I see the glittering tops
Of snow-peaked mounts, the wid'ning vale's expanse,
Large prairies where free herds of horses prance,
Exhaustless wealth of crops,
In vast, magnificent extravagance.
These grand, exuberant plains,
These stately rivers, each with many a mouth,
The exquisite beauty of the soft-aired south,
The boundless seas of grains,
Luxuriant forests' lush and splendid growth.
The distant siren-song
Of the green island in the eastern sea,
Is not the lay for this new chivalry.
It is not free and strong
To chant on prairies 'neath this brilliant sky.
The echo faints and fails;
It suiteth not, upon this western plain,
Out voice or spirit; we should stir again
The wilderness, and make the vales
Resound unto a yet unheard-of strain.
Scheme | ABBAB CDDCX EAAEA FGGFG HIIHX JKKJX AFFAX LMXLM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 110111 10101111101 1001110100 011101 1101110100 110111 10010001 111110100101 1010101 11011010101 110111 101110101 010110101 111111 11001001101 111111 1101010101 101111001 111111 11010011001 1101001 111101101 1101111101 1111 0101000100 1101001 11010111001 01001010111 010111 01001010101 010101 1011000101 1101111100 111101 1111011101 010101 111011101 1111011101 01000101 110010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,442 |
Words | 255 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 146 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 13, 2023
- 1:17 min read
- 63 Views
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"How Long?" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/12682/how-long%3F>.
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