Analysis of Ladder of St. Augustine, The
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Saint Augustine! well hast thou said,
That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame!
All common things, each day's events,
That with the hour begin and end,
Our pleasures and our discontents,
Are rounds by which we may ascend.
The low desire, the base design,
That makes another's virtues less;
The revel of the ruddy wine,
And all occasions of excess;
The longing for ignoble things;
The strife for triumph more than truth;
The hardening of the heart, that brings
Irreverence for the dreams of youth;
All thoughts of ill; all evil deeds,
That have their root in thoughts of ill;
Whatever hinders or impedes
The action of the nobler will;--
All these must first be trampled down
Beneath our feet, if we would gain
In the bright fields of fair renown
The right of eminent domain.
We have not wings, we cannot soar;
But we have feet to scale and climb
By slow degrees, by more and more,
The cloudy summits of our time.
The mighty pyramids of stone
That wedge-like cleave the desert airs,
When nearer seen, and better known,
Are but gigantic flights of stairs.
The distant mountains, that uprear
Their solid bastions to the skies,
Are crossed by pathways, that appear
As we to higher levels rise.
The heights by great men reached and kept
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.
Standing on what too long we bore
With shoulders bent and downcast eyes,
We may discern--unseen before--
A path to higher destinies.
Nor deem the irrevocable Past,
As wholly wasted, wholly vain,
If, rising on its wrecks, at last
To something nobler we attain.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMN OPOP MQXQ RSRS MQMX TLTL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (92%) |
Metre | 1101111 111010111 01011111 011011111 11011101 110100101 101001001 11111101 010100101 11010101 01010101 0101011 01010101 01110111 010010111 010010111 11111101 11110111 1010101 01010101 11111101 011011111 00111101 01110001 11111101 11111101 11011101 010101101 01010011 11110101 11010101 11010111 0101011 11010101 1111101 11110101 01111101 01011101 11110101 01010001 10111111 1101011 11010101 01110100 110010001 11010101 11011111 11010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,665 |
Words | 297 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 109 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 1:29 min read
- 453 Views
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"Ladder of St. Augustine, The" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18674/ladder-of-st.-augustine%2C-the>.
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