Analysis of Euroclydon
Henry Kendall 1839 (Australia) – 1882 (Sydney)
On the storm-cloven Cape
The bitter waves roll,
With the bergs of the Pole,
And the darks and the damps of the Northern Sea:
For the storm-cloven Cape
Is an alien Shape
With a fearful face! and it moans, and it stands
Outside all lands
Everlastingly!
When the fruits of the year
Have been gathered in Spain,
And the Indian rain
Is rich on the evergreen lands of the Sun,
There comes to this Cape
To this alien Shape,
As the waters beat in and the echoes troop forth,
The Wind of the North,
Euroclydon!
And the wilted thyme,
And the patches past
Of the nettles cast
In the drift of the rift, and the broken rime,
Are tumbled and blown
To every zone
With the famished glede, and the plovers thinned
By this fourfold Wind -
This Wind sublime!
On the wrinkled hills,
By starts and fits,
The wild Moon sits;
And the rindles fill and flash and fall
In the way of her light,
Through the straitened night,
When the sea-heralds clamour, and elves of the war,
In the torrents afar,
Hold festival!
From ridge to ridge
The polar fires
On the naked spires,
With a foreign splendour, flit and flow;
And clough and cave
And architrave
Have a blood-coloured glamour on roof and on wall,
Like a nether hall
In the hells below!
The dead, dry lips
Of the ledges, split
By the thunder fit
And the stress of the sprites of the forked flame,
Anon break out,
With a shriek and a shout,
Like a hard, bitter laughter, cracked and thin,
From a ghost with a sin
Too dark for a name!
And all thro' the year,
The fierce seas run
From sun to sun,
Across the face of a vacant world!
And the Wind flies forth
From the wild, white North,
That shivers and harries the heart of things,
And shapes with its wings
A chaos uphurled!
Like one who sees
A rebel light
In the thick of the night,
As he stumbles and staggers on summits afar -
Who looks to it still,
Up hill and hill,
With a steadfast hope (though the ways be deep,
And rough, and steep),
Like a steadfast star -
So I, that stand
On the outermost peaks
Of peril, with cheeks
Blue with the salts of a frosty sea,
Have learnt to wait,
With an eye elate
And a heart intent, for the fuller blaze
Of the Beauty that rays
Like a glimpse for me -
Of the Beauty that grows
Whenever I hear
The winds of Fear
From the tops and the bases of barrenness call;
And the duplicate lore
Which I learn evermore,
Is of Harmony filling and rounding the Storm,
And the marvellous Form
That governs all!
Scheme | ABBCAADDB EFFGAAHHF IJJIKKXXI XLLMNNOPX XXXQRRMMQ XSSTUUVVT EGGXHHWWJ XNNPXXYYP XZZC1 1 2 2 C XXEMOO3 3 M |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (36%) Etheree (23%) |
Metre | 10111 01011 101101 00100110101 10111 111001 10101011011 1111 1 101101 111001 001001 1110101101 11111 111001 101010001011 01101 1 00101 00101 10101 00110100101 11001 11001 1010100101 11111 1101 10101 1101 0111 00110101 001101 1011 10110101101 001001 1100 1111 01010 10101 10101101 0101 010 101101011011 10101 00101 0111 10101 10101 0011011011 111 101001 1011010101 101101 11101 01101 0111 1111 010110101 00111 10111 1100100111 01111 0101 1111 0101 001101 111001011001 11111 1101 101110111 0101 1011 1111 10101 11011 110110101 1111 11101 0010110101 101011 10111 101011 01011 0111 1010010111 001001 11110 111001001001 0011 1101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 2,412 |
Words | 464 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 |
Lines Amount | 90 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 187 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 46 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:19 min read
- 31 Views
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"Euroclydon" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17482/euroclydon>.
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