Analysis of At The Last.
Robert Crawford 1959 (Bellshill)
The sky grows white with the moon,
And the sea yearns up to the night
As the soul to an unknown height,
Drawn thence by a starry rune.
Only a lost wind strays,
Like the breath of Passion blown
In the vault of the night unknown;
And the heart in me sobs and says:
'After a while we, too,
Shall rest as the stars above,
When we have no more to do
With the dream of life and love.'
O Time! thy feet that run
Over the hills and waves,
Over the cradles and graves,
From the first to the final sun!
Some day thou too shalt cease —
Some way there'll come to thee
Death's white tranquility,
The boon of an awful peace —
When the latest grief shall flow
With the surge that drifts away,
And the Night shall no more go
In her endless chase of Day.
Then shall the worn heart rest,
Then shall the sad Sea yearn
No more for the Moon's return,
Like a bird on its frozen nest
Dead, with her young ones dead
Under her breast on the bough,
Where nothing can wake them now —
Not the Dawn with its golden tread:
Where Death has been good to all,
Good to the mother and young,
And the dreams are beyond recall,
And the songs have all been sung.
So, at the last, to sleep!
So, at the last, to be
Still as the dead still sea!
Never to wake and weep,
Never to know Love's pain,
Never to yearn on for
What is gone for evermore;
To be as we were again
Ere we came o'er the bourne of birth,
Ere we knew of the fading flowers,
Of love and of life on Earth
And the hearts that were not ours!
Scheme | ABBACDDEFGFGHIIHJKKJLMLMNOONPQQPRSRSTKKTUVVWXYXY |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111101 00111101 10111011 1110101 100111 1011101 00110101 00101101 100111 1110101 1111111 1011101 111111 100101 1001001 10110101 111111 1110111 110100 0111101 1010111 1011101 0011111 0010111 110111 110111 1110101 10111101 110111 1001101 1101111 10111101 1111111 1101001 0011011 0011111 110111 110111 110111 101101 101111 101111 111110 1111001 111100111 111101010 1101111 00110110 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,430 |
Words | 303 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 48 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,116 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 300 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:32 min read
- 62 Views
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"At The Last." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/30628/at-the-last.>.
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