Analysis of Passing Away
Henry Kendall 1839 (Australia) – 1882 (Sydney)
THE SPIRIT of beautiful faces,
The light on the forehead of Love,
And the spell of past visited places,
And the songs and the sweetness thereof;
These, touched by a hand that is hoary;
These, vext with a tune of decay,
Are spoiled of their glow and their glory;
And the burden is, “Passing away!
Passing away!”
Old years and their changes come trooping
At nightfall to you and to me,
When Autumn sits faded and drooping
By the sorrowful waves of the sea.
Faint phantoms that float in the gloaming,
Return with the whispers that say,
“The end which is quiet is coming;
Ye are weary, and passing away!
Passing away!”
It is hard to awake and discover
The swiftness that waits upon Time;
But youth and its beauty are over,
And Love has a sigh in its rhyme.
The Life that looks back and remembers,
Is troubled and tired and gray,
And sick of the sullen Decembers,
Whose burden is, “Passing away!
Passing away!”
We have wandered and wandered together,
And our joys have been many and deep;
But seasons of alien weather
Have ended in longings for sleep.
Pale purpose and perishing passion,
With never a farewell to say,
Die down into sobs of suppression;
The burden is, “Passing away!
Passing away!”
We loved the soft tangle of tresses,
The lips that were fain and afraid.
And the silence of far wildernesses,
With their dower of splendour and shade!
For faces of sweetness we waited,
And days of delight and delay,
Ere Time and its voices were mated
To a voice that sighs, “Passing away!
Passing away!”
O years interwoven with stories
Of strong aspirations and high,
How fleet and how false were the glories
That lived in your limited sky!
Here, sitting by ruinous altars
Of Promise, what word shall we say
To the speech that the rainy wind falters,
Whose burden is, “Passing away!
Passing away!”
Scheme | ababcdcdD ececededD fgfghdaDD fifijdjdD xkakxdxdD lmlmhdhDD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010110010 01101011 0011110010 00100101 111011110 11101101 111110110 001011001 1001 110110110 1111011 110110010 101001101 110110010 01101011 011110110 111001001 1001 1111010010 01011011 110110110 01101011 011110010 11001001 0110101 11011001 1001 1110010010 0101111001 110110010 11001011 110010010 1100111 110111010 01011001 1001 110110110 01101001 0010111 1111101 110110110 01101001 110110010 101111001 1001 11010110 1101001 110110010 11011001 110110010 11011111 1011010110 11011001 1001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,769 |
Words | 329 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 |
Lines Amount | 54 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 234 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 54 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:38 min read
- 91 Views
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"Passing Away" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17550/passing-away>.
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