Analysis of The Voice in the Wild Oak
Henry Kendall 1839 (Australia) – 1882 (Sydney)
Twelve years ago, when I could face
High heaven’s dome with different eyes—
In days full-flowered with hours of grace,
And nights not sad with sighs—
I wrote a song in which I strove
To shadow forth thy strain of woe,
Dark widowed sister of the grove!—
Twelve wasted years ago.
But youth was then too young to find
Those high authentic syllables,
Whose voice is like the wintering wind
By sunless mountain fells;
Nor had I sinned and suffered then
To that superlative degree
That I would rather seek, than men,
Wild fellowship with thee!
But he who hears this autumn day
Thy more than deep autumnal rhyme,
Is one whose hair was shot with grey
By Grief instead of Time.
He has no need, like many a bard,
To sing imaginary pain,
Because he bears, and finds it hard,
The punishment of Cain.
No more he sees the affluence
Which makes the heart of Nature glad;
For he has lost the fine, first sense
Of Beauty that he had.
The old delight God’s happy breeze
Was wont to give, to Grief has grown;
And therefore, Niobe of trees,
His song is like thine own!
But I, who am that perished soul,
Have wasted so these powers of mine,
That I can never write that whole,
Pure, perfect speech of thine.
Some lord of words august, supreme,
The grave, grand melody demands;
The dark translation of thy theme
I leave to other hands.
Yet here, where plovers nightly call
Across dim, melancholy leas—
Where comes by whistling fen and fall
The moan of far-off seas—
A grey, old Fancy often sits
And fills thy strong, strange rhyme by fits
With awful utterings.
Then times there are when all the words
Are like the sentences of one
Shut in by Fate from wind and birds
And light of stars and sun,
No dazzling dryad, but a dark
Dream-haunted spirit doomed to be
Imprisoned, crampt in bands of bark,
For all eternity.
Yea, like the speech of one aghast
At Immortality in chains,
What time the lordly storm rides past
With flames and arrowy rains:
Some wan Tithonus of the wood,
White with immeasurable years—
An awful ghost in solitude
With moaning moors and meres.
And when high thunder smites the hill
And hunts the wild dog to his den,
Thy cries, like maledictions, shrill
And shriek from glen to glen,
As if a frightful memory whipped
Thy soul for some infernal crime
That left it blasted, blind, and stript—
A dread to Death and Time!
But when the fair-haired August dies,
And flowers wax strong and beautiful,
Thy songs are stately harmonies
By wood-lights green and cool—
Most like the voice of one who shows
Through sufferings fierce, in fine relief,
A noble patience and repose—
A dignity in grief.
But, ah! conceptions fade away,
And still the life that lives in thee—
The soul of thy majestic lay—
Remains a mystery!
And he must speak the speech divine—
The language of the high-throned lords—
Who’d give that grand old theme of thine
Its sense in faultless words.
By hollow lands and sea-tracts harsh,
With ruin of the fourfold gale,
Where sighs the sedge and sobs the marsh,
Still wail thy lonely wail;
And, year by year, one step will break
The sleep of far hill-folded streams,
And seek, if only for thy sake
Thy home of many dreams.
Scheme | ABABCDCDEXEXFGFG HIHIJKJK XLXLMNMN OPOPQRQR SMSMTTA UVUVWGWG XYXYXXXA ZFZFXIEI BXMX1 2 1 2 HGHGPXPU 3 4 3 4 5 6 5 6 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11011111 110111001 0111011011 011111 11010111 1111111 11010101 110101 11111111 11010100 1111011 11101 11110101 11010001 11110111 11011 11111101 11110101 11111111 110111 111111001 1101001 01110111 010011 11110100 11011101 11110111 110111 01011101 11111111 01111 111111 11111101 110111011 11110111 101111 11111001 01110001 01010111 111101 11110101 0111001 11110101 011111 01110101 01111111 1101 11111101 11010011 10111101 011101 11001101 11010111 01010111 110100 11011101 1010001 1101111 11011 111101 1101001 1101010 110101 01110101 01011111 11111 011111 110101001 11110101 11110101 011101 11011101 010110100 11110100 111101 11011111 110010101 01010001 010001 11010101 01011101 01110101 010100 01110101 01010111 11111111 11011 11010111 11010111 11010101 111101 01111111 01111101 01110111 111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 3,078 |
Words | 572 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 8, 8, 8, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 95 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 223 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 52 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:51 min read
- 55 Views
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"The Voice in the Wild Oak" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17599/the-voice-in-the-wild-oak>.
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