Analysis of Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Have I dreamed? or was it real,
What I saw as in a vision,
When to marches hymeneal
In the land of the Ideal
Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?
What! are these the guests whose glances
Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
These the wild, bewildering fancies,
That with dithyrambic dances
As with magic circles bound me?
Ah! how cold are their caresses!
Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!
Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,
And from loose, dishevelled tresses
Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!
O my songs! whose winsome measures
Filled my heart with secret rapture!
Children of my golden leisures!
Must even your delights and pleasures
Fade and perish with the capture?
Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous,
When they came to me unbidden;
Voices single, and in chorus,
Like the wild birds singing o'er us
In the dark of branches hidden.
Disenchantment! Disillusion!
Must each noble aspiration
Come at last to this conclusion,
Jarring discord, wild confusion,
Lassitude, renunciation?
Not with steeper fall nor faster,
From the sun's serene dominions,
Not through brighter realms nor vaster,
In swift ruin and disaster,
Icarus fell with shattered pinions!
Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora!
Why did mighty Jove create thee
Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora,
Beautiful as young Aurora,
If to win thee is to hate thee?
No, not hate thee! for this feeling
Of unrest and long resistance
Is but passionate appealing,
A prophetic whisper stealing
O'er the chords of our existence.
Him whom thou dost once enamour,
Thou, beloved, never leavest;
In life's discord, strife, and clamor,
Still he feels thy spell of glamour;
Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest.
Weary hearts by thee are lifted,
Struggling souls by thee are strengthened,
Clouds of fear asunder rifted,
Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,
Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!
Therefore art thou ever dlearer,
O my Sibyl, my deceiver!
For thou makest each mystery clearer,
And the unattained seems nearer,
When thou fillest my heart with fever!
Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!
Though the fields around us wither,
There are ampler realms and spaces,
Where no foot has left its traces:
Let us turn and wander thither!
Scheme | ABAAB CDXED CCECX FGCFG HBHHB BBBBB GCGGC IDIID JKJJK GLGGL LLLLL GGGGG CGEEG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1111111 11110010 11101 0011001 1111011 11101110 1111011 101010010 11110 11101011 11111010 1010101 1111110 011110 10110 11111010 11111010 1011101 110101010 10101010 11111100 111111 10100010 101110101 00111010 0010010 1110010 11111010 10101010 10010 11101110 101011 1110111 01100010 1011101 10101010 11101011 11101110 10011010 11111111 11111110 10101010 11100010 00101010 1001110010 111111 101101 01101010 11111110 111111 10111110 100111110 1110101 1111010 11101010 111101 111011 111110010 001110 11111110 11101010 10101110 1111010 11111110 1110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,131 |
Words | 361 |
Sentences | 30 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 65 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 133 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 15, 2023
- 1:50 min read
- 108 Views
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"Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18576/epimetheus%2C-or-the-poet%27s-afterthought.-%28birds-of-passage.-flight-the-first%29>.
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