Analysis of Autumnal Nightfall

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)



Round Autumn's mouldering urn
Loud mourns the chill and cheerless gale,
When nightfall shades the quiet vale
And stars in beauty burn.

'Tis the year's eventide.
The wind, like one that sighs in pain
O?er joys that ne'er will bloom again
Mourns on the far hillside.

And yet my pensive eye
Rests on the faint blue mountain long;
And for the fairy-land of song,
That lies beyond, I sigh.

The moon unveils her brow;
In the mid-sky her urn glows bright,
And in her sad and mellowing light
The valley sleeps below.

Upon the hazel gray
The lyre of Autumn hangs unstrung
And o?er its tremulous chords are flung
The fringes of decay.

I stand deep musing here,
Beneath the dark and motionless beech,
Whilst wandering winds of nightfall reach
My melancholy ear.

The air breathes chill and free:
A spirit in soft music calls
From Autumn's gray and moss-grown halls,
And round her withered tree.

The hoar and mantled oak,
With moss and twisted ivy brown,
Bends in its lifeless beauty down
Where weeds the fountain choke.

That fountain's hollow voice
Echoes the sound of precious things;
Of early feeling's tuneful springs
Choked with our blighted joys.

Leaves, that the night-wind bears
To earth's cold bosom with a sign,
Are types of our mortality,
And of our fading years.

The tree that shades the plain,
Wasting and hoar as time decays,
Spring shall renew with cheerful days,--
But not my joys again.


Scheme ABBA CDEC FGGF XCCX HGXH IJJI KLLK MNNM XOOX XXCX DPPE
Poetic Form Quatrain  (55%)
Metre 11011 1101011 1110101 010101 1011 01111101 11111101 11011 011101 11011101 01010111 110111 010101 00110111 000101001 010101 010101 0111011 011100111 010101 111101 010101001 11001111 11001 011101 01001101 11010111 010101 01011 11010101 10110101 110101 11101 10011101 1101101 1110101 110111 11110101 111100100 0110101 011101 10011101 11011101 111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,355
Words 248
Sentences 15
Stanzas 11
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 44
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 100
Words per stanza (avg) 22
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:16 min read
159

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. more…

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