Analysis of The Released Rebel Prisoner
Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
Armies he's seen--the herds of war,
But never such swarms of men
As now in the Nineveh of the North--
How mad the Rebellion then!
And yet but dimly he divines
The depth of that deceit,
And superstitution of vast pride
Humbled to such defeat.
Seductive shone the Chiefs in arms--
His steel the nearest magnet drew;
Wreathed with its kind, the Gulf-weed drives--
'Tis Nature's wrong they rue.
His face is hidden in his beard,
But his heart peers out at eye--
And such a heart! like a mountain-pool
Where no man passes by.
He thinks of Hill--a brave soul gone;
And Ashby dead in pale disdain;
And Stuart with the Rupert-plume,
Whose blue eye never shall laugh again.
He hears the drum; he sees our boys
From his wasted fields return;
Ladies feast them on strawberries,
And even to kiss them yearn.
He marks them bronzed, in soldier-trim,
The rifle proudly borne;
They bear it for an heirloom home,
And he--disarmed--jail-worn.
Home, home--his heart is full of it;
But home he never shall see,
Even should he stand upon the spot:
'Tis gone!--where his brothers be.
The cypress-moss from tree to tree
Hangs in his Southern land;
As weird, from thought to thought of his
Run memories hand in hand.
And so he lingers--lingers on
In the City of the Foe--
His cousins and his countrymen
Who see him listless go.
Scheme | XAXA BCXC BDBD XEXE XXXA BFBF XGXG XBXH HIBI XJXJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (90%) Etheree (38%) |
Metre | 10110111 1101111 1100100101 1100101 0111011 011101 01111 101101 01010101 11010101 11110111 110111 11110011 1111111 010110101 111101 11110111 01010101 01010101 111101101 110111101 1110101 1011110 0101111 11110101 010101 1111111 010111 11111111 1111011 101110101 1111101 01011111 101101 11111111 1100101 01110101 0010101 11001100 111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,281 |
Words | 238 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 100 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 36 Views
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