Analysis of The Woodman And The Nightingale
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 (Horsham) – 1822 (Lerici)
A woodman whose rough heart was out of tune
(I think such hearts yet never came to good)
Hated to hear, under the stars or moon,
One nightingale in an interfluous wood
Satiate the hungry dark with melody;--
And as a vale is watered by a flood,
Or as the moonlight fills the open sky
Struggling with darkness—as a tuberose
Peoples some Indian dell with scents which lie
Like clouds above the flower from which they rose,
The singing of that happy nightingale
In this sweet forest, from the golden close
Of evening till the star of dawn may fail,
Was interfused upon the silentness;
The folded roses and the violets pale
Heard her within their slumbers, the abyss
Of heaven with all its planets; the dull ear
Of the night-cradled earth; the loneliness
Of the circumfluous waters,—every sphere
And every flower and beam and cloud and wave,
And every wind of the mute atmosphere,
And every beast stretched in its rugged cave,
And every bird lulled on its mossy bough,
And every silver moth fresh from the grave
Which is its cradle—ever from below
Aspiring like one who loves too fair, too far,
To be consumed within the purest glow
Of one serene and unapproached star,
As if it were a lamp of earthly light,
Unconscious, as some human lovers are,
Itself how low, how high beyond all height
The heaven where it would perish!—and every form
That worshipped in the temple of the night
Was awed into delight, and by the charm
Girt as with an interminable zone,
Whilst that sweet bird, whose music was a storm
Of sound, shook forth the dull oblivion
Out of their dreams; harmony became love
In every soul but one.
And so this man returned with axe and saw
At evening close from killing the tall treen,
The soul of whom by Nature’s gentle law
Was each a wood-nymph, and kept ever green
The pavement and the roof of the wild copse,
Chequering the sunlight of the blue serene
With jagged leaves,—and from the forest tops
Singing the winds to sleep—or weeping oft
Fast showers of aereal water-drops
Into their mother’s bosom, sweet and soft,
Nature’s pure tears which have no bitterness;--
Around the cradles of the birds aloft
They spread themselves into the loveliness
Of fan-like leaves, and over pallid flowers
Hang like moist clouds:—or, where high branches kiss,
Make a green space among the silent bowers,
Like a vast fane in a metropolis,
Surrounded by the columns and the towers
All overwrought with branch-like traceries
In which there is religion—and the mute
Persuasion of unkindled melodies,
Odours and gleams and murmurs, which the lute
Of the blind pilot-spirit of the blast
Stirs as it sails, now grave and now acute,
Wakening the leaves and waves, ere it has passed
To such brief unison as on the brain
One tone, which never can recur, has cast,
One accent never to return again.
The world is full of Woodmen who expel
Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life,
And vex the nightingales in every dell.
Scheme | ABA BXX CDC DED EDE DXD FGF GXG HIH IJI JKJ XXK LXL DMX MDM DND XDN DDD DDD DOD OPO PXPX QXQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 0101111111 1111110111 1011100111 11000111 101011100 0101110101 110110101 100110101 10110011111 11010101111 0101110100 0111010101 1101011111 110101 01010001001 100111001 11011110011 101110100 101101001 010010010101 0100110110 01001101101 0100111111 01001011101 1111010101 01011111111 1101010101 1101011 1110011101 101110101 0111110111 0101111001001 1100010101 1101010101 1111010001 1111110101 1111010100 1111100011 0100111 0111011101 1101110011 0111110101 1101101101 0100011011 10110101 111010101 1001111101 11011101 0111010101 1011111100 0101010101 11010101 11110101010 1111111101 10110101010 1011000100 01010100010 1011111 0111010001 01011100 101010101 1011010101 1111110101 101011111 1111001101 1111010111 1011010101 011111101 110110111 010101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,882 |
Words | 522 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 23 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 70 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 101 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 2:36 min read
- 117 Views
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