Analysis of The doom of a city
James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)
I
FROM out the house I crept,
The house which long had caged my homeless life:
The mighty City in vast silence slept,
Dreaming away its tumult, toil, and strife:
But sleep and sleep's rich dreams were not for me,
For me, accurst, whom terror and the pain
Of baffled longings, and starved misery,
And such remorse as sears the breast,
And hopeless doubt which gnaws the brain
Till wildest action blind and vain
Would be more welcome than supine unrest,
Drove forth as one possest
To leave my kind and dare the desert sea;
To drift alone and far,
Dubious of any port or isle to gain,
Ignorant of chart and star,
Upon that infinite and mysterious main
Which wastes in foam against our shore;
Whose moans and murmurs evermore,
Insupportably sublime,
Haunting the crowded tumult of our Time,
Suspend its hurrying breath -
Like whispers of sad ghosts and spirits free
From worlds beyond our life and death,
The unknown awful realm where broods Eternity.
I paced through desert streets, beneath the gleam
Of lamps that lit my trembling life alone;
Like lamps sepulchral which had slowly burned
Through sunless ages, deep and undiscerned,
Within a buried City's maze of stone;
Whose peopling corpses, while they ever dream
Of birth and death - of complicated life
Whose days and months and years
Are wild with laughters, groans, and tears,
As with themselves and Doom
They wage, with loss or gain, incessant strife,
Indeed, lie motionless within their tomb,
Lie motionless and never laugh or weep,
All still, and buried deep
For ever in death's sleep,
While burn the quiet lamps amidst the breathless gloom.
My boat lay waiting there,
Upon the moonless river
Whose pulse had ceased to quiver
In that unnatural hush of brooding night.
I thought, Free breezes course the billowy deep!
And rowed on panting through the feverous air,
Leaving the great main waters on in my right
For that canal which creeps into the sea
Across the livid marshes wild and bare.
So slowly faded back from sight,
As cloth a dream insensibly
Fade backward on the ebbing tide of sleep,
That city which had home nor hope for me,
That stifling tomb from which I now was free.
Like some weak life whose sluggish moments creep
Diffused on worthless objects, yet whose tide
With dull reluctance hard to understand
Refrains its death-in-life from death's full sleep,
The river's shallow waters oozed out wide,
Inclosing dreary flats of barren sand;
So merged at last into the lethal waste
That bounds of sea and stream could not be traced.
Long languidly I rowed,
With sick and weary pain,
Between the deepest channel's bitter weeds
Whose rankness salt slime feeds;
And so out blindly through the dismal main,
Now shaken with a long hoarse-growling swell.
And soon the Tempest-as a King who had slept
The sleep of worn-out frenzy, while his slaves
Cowered still in stupor till he woke again
Refreshed for carnage-from his torpor leapt
Breathed swarthy pallor through the dense low sky,
And hurrying swift and fell
Outspeeded his own thunder-bearing glooms;
Then prone and instantaneous from on high
Plunged down in one tremendous blast,
Which crashed into white dust the heaving waves
And left the ocean level when it past....
There was a moment's respite; silence reigned;
Such shuddering silence as may once appal
The universe of tombs,
Ere the last trumpet's clangour rend them all:
And I sank down, one frail and helpless man
Alone with desolation on the sea,
To pray while any sense of prayer remained
Amidst the horrors overwhelming me.
How shall I tell that tempest's thunder-story?
The soldier plunged into the Battle-stress,
Struggling and gasping in the mighty flood,
Stunned with the roar of cannon, blind with smoke,
'Midst yells and tramplings drunk and mad with blood,
What knows he of the Battle's spheric glory?
Of heavenly laws that all its evil bless -
Of sacred rights of justice which invoke
Its sternest pleading - of the tranquil eye
Triumphant o'er its chaos - of the Mind
Commanding all, serene and unsubdued,
Which having first with wisest care de
Scheme | ABCBCDEDFEEFBDGEGEHHIIJDJD KLXBLKCMMNCNOOON PQQROPRDPRSODD OTUOTUVV XEWWESBYEBASMAZYZ1 SXSXD1 D D2 3 4 3 D2 4 AXBD |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1 110111 0111111101 0101001101 1001110101 1101110111 111110001 1101001100 01011101 01011101 11010101 1111010101 11111 1111010101 110101 10011011111 1001101 011100001001 110101101 1101010 101 10010101101 0111001 1101110101 110110101 001101110100 1111010101 11111100101 11111101 1110101 0101010111 111011101 110111001 110101 1111101 110101 1111110101 0111000111 1100010111 110101 110011 110101010101 111101 010110 1111110 01010011101 111101011 011101011 10011101011 1101110101 0101010101 11010111 11011 1101010111 1101111111 1101111111 1111110101 0111010111 110101101 0111011111 0101010111 11011101 1111010101 1111011111 1111 110101 0101010101 11111 0111010101 1101011101 01010101111 0111110111 1101011101 0111011101 110110111 0100101 11110101 1100100111 11010101 1101110101 0101010111 1101010101 1100101111 01011 10111111 0111110101 011010101 1111011101 010100101 1111111010 0101010101 10001000101 1101110111 110110111 1111010110 11001111101 1101110101 1101010101 01010110101 01010101 110111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,280 |
Words | 696 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 26, 16, 14, 8, 25, 12 |
Lines Amount | 101 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 539 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 115 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 3:32 min read
- 106 Views
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"The doom of a city" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 Sep. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20676/the-doom--of-a-city>.
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