Analysis of Merlin II
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 (Boston) – 1882 (Concord)
The rhyme of the poet
Modulates the king's affairs,
Balance-loving nature
Made all things in pairs.
To every foot its antipode,
Each color with its counter glowed,
To every tone beat answering tones,
Higher or graver;
Flavor gladly blends with flavor;
Leaf answers leaf upon the bough,
And match the paired cotyledons.
Hands to hands, and feet to feet,
In one body grooms and brides;
Eldest rite, two married sides
In every mortal meet.
Light's far furnace shines,
Smelting balls and bars,
Forging double stars,
Glittering twins and trines.
The animals are sick with love,
Lovesick with rhyme;
Each with all propitious Time
Into chorus wove.
Like the dancers' ordered band,
Thoughts come also hand in hand,
In equal couples mated,
Or else alternated,
Adding by their mutual gage
One to other health and age.
Solitary fancies go
Short-lived wandering to and fro,
Most like to bachelors,
Or an ungiven maid,
Not ancestors,
With no posterity to make the lie afraid,
Or keep truth undecayed.
Perfect paired as eagle's wings,
Justice is the rhyme of things;
Trade and counting use
The serf-same tuneful muse;
And Nemesis,
Who with even matches odd,
Who athwart space redresses
The partial wrong,
Fills the just period,
And finishes the song.
Subtle rhymes with ruin rife
Murmur in the house of life,
Sung by the Sisters as they spin;
In perfect time and measure, they
Build and unbuild our echoing clay,
As the two twilights of the day
Fold us music-drunken in.
Scheme | ABCBAXXCCXBDEEDXFFBXGGX HHXIJJKKLMLMA NNXXXXBOIO PPQRRRQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011010 10101 101010 11101 1100111 11011101 1100111001 10110 10101110 11010101 01011 1110111 0110101 1011101 0100101 11101 10101 10101 100101 01001111 111 1110101 01101 1010101 1110101 0101010 11100 10111001 1110101 100101 11100101 11110 1111 110 110100110101 1111 0111101 1010111 10101 011101 0100 1110101 10111 0101 101100 010001 1011101 1000111 11010111 00110101 101101001 1011101 1110100 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,412 |
Words | 249 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 23, 13, 10, 7 |
Lines Amount | 53 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 289 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 62 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 73 Views
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"Merlin II" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 24 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29831/merlin-ii>.
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