Analysis of In A Swedish Graveyard
Emma Lazarus 1849 (New York City) – 1887 (New York City)
After wearisome toil and much sorrow,
How quietly sleep they at last,
Neither dreading and fearing the morrow,
Nor vainly bemoaning the past!
Shall we give them our envy or pity?
Shall we shun or yearn after such rest,
So calm near the turbulent city,
With their heart stilled at length in their breast?
They all sleep with their heads lying westward,
Where all suns and all days have gone down.
Do they long for the dawn, looking eastward?
Do they dream of the strife and the crown?
Each one held a lit taper when dying:
Where hath vanished the fugitive flame?
With his love, and his joy, and his sighing,
Alas! and his youth and his name.
The living stands o'er him and dreameth,
And wonders what dreams came to him.
While the tender, brief twilight still gleameth,
With a light strangely mournful and dim.
And he wonders what lights and what shadows
Passed over these dead long ago,
When their feet now at rest trod these meadows,
And their hearts throbbed to pleasure or woe
What dreams came to them in their living?
The self-same that come now to thee.
If thou findest those dreams are deceiving,
Then these lives thou wilt know and wilt see:
The same visions of love and of glory,
The same vain regret for the past;
All the same poor and pitiful story,
Till the taper's extinguished at last.
All the treasures on earth that they cherished,
Now they care not to clasp nor to save;
And the poor little lights, how they perished,
Slowly dying alone in the grave!
With a flickering faint on the features
Of age, or of youth in its bloom:
Lighting up for grim Death his weak creatures,
In the darkness and night of the tomb,—
With a radiance ghostly and mournful,
On the good, on the just and unjust;
For a space, till the monarch, so scornful,
Turned the light and the lighted to dust.
No taper of earth he desired
In his halls where they quietly rest;
For all those who have toiled and are tired,
Utter darkness and sleep may be best.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJKAKA GCGCCBCB LMLMNONO PQPQEDED |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1010010110 11001111 1010010010 11001001 11111010110 111111011 111010010 111111011 1111111010 111011111 1111011010 111101001 1110110110 111001001 1110110110 01011011 010110101 01011111 10101111 101101001 011011011 11011101 111111111 011111011 111110110 01111111 111111010 111111011 0110110110 01101101 1011010010 10101011 1010111110 111111111 0011011110 101001001 1010011010 11111011 1011111110 001001101 1010010010 101101001 101101110 101001011 110111010 011111001 1111110110 101001111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,900 |
Words | 360 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 254 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 60 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:48 min read
- 89 Views
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"In A Swedish Graveyard" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/12684/in-a-swedish-graveyard>.
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