Analysis of What The Traveller Said At Sunset
John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)
The shadows grow and deepen round me,
I feel the deffall in the air;
The muezzin of the darkening thicket,
I hear the night-thrush call to prayer.
The evening wind is sad with farewells,
And loving hands unclasp from mine;
Alone I go to meet the darkness
Across an awful boundary-line.
As from the lighted hearths behind me
I pass with slow, reluctant feet,
What waits me in the land of strangeness?
What face shall smile, what voice shall greet?
What space shall awe, what brightness blind me?
What thunder-roll of music stun?
What vast processions sweep before me
Of shapes unknown beneath the sun?
I shrink from unaccustomed glory,
I dread the myriad-voiced strain;
Give me the unforgotten faces,
And let my lost ones speak again.
He will not chide my mortal yearning
Who is our Brother and our Friend;
In whose full life, divine and human,
The heavenly and the earthly blend.
Mine be the joy of soul-communion,
The sense of spiritual strength renewed,
The reverence for the pure and holy,
The dear delight of doing good.
No fitting ear is mine to listen
An endless anthem's rise and fall;
No curious eye is mine to measure
The pearl gate and the jasper wall.
For love must needs be more than knowledge:
What matter if I never know
Why Aldebaran's star is ruddy,
Or warmer Sirius white as snow!
Forgive my human words, O Father!
I go Thy larger truth to prove;
Thy mercy shall transcend my longing
I seek but love, and Thou art Love!
I go to find my lost and mourned for
Safe in Thy sheltering goodness still,
And all that hope and faith foreshadow
Made perfect in Thy holy will!
Scheme | ABXB XCDC AEDE AFAF AXXX GHFH FXAX FIJI XKAK JXGX XLKL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (73%) |
Metre | 01101011 1101001 011010010 11011111 01011111 0101111 011111010 011101001 110101011 11110101 111001110 11111111 111111011 11011101 110101011 11010101 11101010 11010011 110110 01111101 111111010 1110100101 011101010 010000101 110111010 0111000101 0100101010 01011101 110111110 1101101 1100111110 01100101 111111110 11011101 111110 1101111 011101110 11110111 110101110 11110111 111111011 101100101 011101010 10101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,547 |
Words | 288 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 114 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:27 min read
- 41 Views
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"What The Traveller Said At Sunset" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/23281/what-the-traveller-said-at-sunset>.
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