Analysis of Mount Erebus: (A Fragment)

Henry Kendall 1839 (Australia) – 1882 (Sydney)



A MIGHTY theatre of snow and fire,
Girt with perpetual Winter, and sublime
By reason of that lordly solitude
Which dwells for ever at the world’s white ends;
And in that weird-faced wilderness of ice,
There is no human foot, nor any paw
Or hoof of beast, but where the shrill winds drive
The famished birds of storm across the tracts
Whose centre is the dim mysterious Pole.
Beyond—yea far beyond the homes of man,
By water never dark with coming ships,
Near seas that know not feather, scale, or fin,
The grand volcano, like a weird Isaiah,
Set in that utmost region of the Earth,
Doth thunder forth the awful utterance,
Whose syllables are flame; and when the fierce
Antarctic Night doth hold dominionship
Within her fastnessess, then round the cone
Of Erebus a crown of tenfold light
Appears; and shafts of marvellous splendour shoot
Far out to east and west and south and north,
Whereat a gorgeous dome of glory roofs
Wild leagues of mountain and transfigured waves,
And lends all things a beauty terrible.

Far-reaching lands, whereon the hand of Change
Hath never rested since the world began,
Lie here in fearful fellowship with cold
And rain and tempest. Here colossal horns
Of hill start up and take the polar fogs
Shot through with flying stars of fire; and here,
Above the dead-grey crescents topped with spires
Of thunder-smoke, one half the heaven flames
With that supremest light whose glittering life
Is yet a marvel unto all but One—
The Entity Almighty, whom we feel
Is nearest us when we are face to face
With Nature’s features aboriginal,
And in the hearing of her primal speech
And in the thraldom of her primal power.

While like the old Chaldean king who waxed
Insane with pride, we human beings grow
To think we are the mightiest of the world,
And lords of all terrestrial things, behold
The sea rolls in with a superb disdain
Upon our peopled shores, omnipotent;
And while we set up things of clay and call
Our idols gods; and while we boast or fume
About the petty honours, or the poor,
Pale disappointments of our meagre lives,
Lo, changeless as Eternity itself,
The grand Antarctic mountain looms outside
All breathing life; and, with its awful speech,
Is as an emblem of the Power Supreme,
Whose thunders shake the boundless Universe,
Whose lightnings make a terror of all Space.


Scheme AXXXXBXXXCXXXXXXBXXXXXXD XCEXXXXXXXXFDGA XXXEXXXXXXXXGXXF
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 01010011010 11010010001 11011110 1111010111 0011110011 1111011101 1111110111 0101110101 11010101001 0111010111 1101011101 1111110111 0101010110 101110101 1101010100 1100110101 0101111 01011101 1101111 01011111 1111010101 101011101 11110011 0111010100 110110111 1101010101 110101011 0101010101 1111010101 11110111001 0101110111 1101110101 111111001 1101010111 0100010111 1101111111 110100100 0001010101 0001101010 11011111 0111110101 11110100101 01110100101 0110100101 01101010100 0111111101 10101011111 010101101 1001011011 111010001 0101010111 1101011101 11110101001 110101010 1101010111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 2,267
Words 406
Sentences 6
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 24, 15, 16
Lines Amount 55
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 615
Words per stanza (avg) 135
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:01 min read
118

Henry Kendall

Thomas Henry Kendall was a nineteenth-century Australian author and bush poet, who was particularly known for his poems and tales set in a natural environment setting. more…

All Henry Kendall poems | Henry Kendall Books

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