Analysis of The Haunted Chamber. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The Third)

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



Each heart has its haunted chamber,
Where the silent moonlight falls!
On the floor are mysterious footsteps,
There are whispers along the walls!

And mine at times is haunted
By phantoms of the Past
As motionless as shadows
By the silent moonlight cast.

A form sits by the window,
That is not seen by day,
For as soon as the dawn approaches
It vanishes away.

It sits there in the moonlight
Itself as pale and still,
And points with its airy finger
Across the window-sill.

Without before the window,
There stands a gloomy pine,
Whose boughs wave upward and downward
As wave these thoughts of mine.

And underneath its branches
Is the grave of a little child,
Who died upon life's threshold,
And never wept nor smiled.

What are ye, O pallid phantoms!
That haunt my troubled brain?
That vanish when day approaches,
And at night return again?

What are ye, O pallid phantoms!
But the statues without breath,
That stand on the bridge overarching
The silent river of death?


Scheme abxb xcxc defe xgag dhxh fixi Jxfx Jkxk
Poetic Form Quatrain  (88%)
Metre 11111010 101011 101101001 11100101 0111110 110101 110011 101011 0111010 111111 111101010 110001 111001 011101 01111010 010101 0101010 110101 11110010 111111 001110 10110101 110111 010111 11111010 111101 11011010 0110101 11111010 101011 11101100 0101011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 941
Words 172
Sentences 13
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 96
Words per stanza (avg) 21
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

51 sec read
102

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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