Analysis of Now Returned Home
Beyond the narrows of the Inner Hebrides
We sailed the cold angry sea toward Barra, where Heaval mountain
Lifts like a mast. There were few people on the steamer, it was late in the
year; I noticed most an old shepherd,
Two wise-eyed dogs wove anxious circles around his feet, and a thin-armed
girl
Who cherished what seemed a doll, wrapping it against the sea-wind. When
it moved I said to my wife 'She'll smother it.'
And she to the girl: 'Is your baby cold? You'd better run down out of the
wind and uncover its face.'
She raised the shawl and said 'He is two weeks old. His mother died in
Glasgow in the hospital
Where he was born. She was my sister.' I looked ahead at the bleak island,
gray stones, ruined castle,
A few gaunt houses under the high and comfortless mountain; my wife
looked at the sickly babe,
And said 'There's a good doctor in Barra? It will soon be winter.' 'Ah,'
she answered, 'Barra'd be heaven for him,
The poor wee thing, there's Heaval to break the wind. We live on a wee
island yonder away,
Just the one house.'
The steamer moored, and a skiff—what they call a
curragh, like a canvas canoe
Equipped with oars—came swiftly along the side. The dark-haired girl
climbed down to it, with one arm holding
That doubtful slip of life to her breast; a tall young man with sea-pale eyes
and an older man
Helped her; if a word was spoken I did not hear it. They stepped a mast
and hoisted a henna-color
Bat's wing of sail.
Now, returned home
After so many thousands of miles of road and ocean, all the hulls sailed in,
the houses visited,
I remember that slender skiff with dark henna sail
Bearing off across the stormy sunset to the distant island
Most clearly; and have rather forgotten the dragging whirlpools of London,
The screaming haste of New York.
Scheme | XABXXCDXBXDEFEXXXXBXX BXCXXXXXG XDXGFAX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010101010100 110110101101110 110110110101011100 111011110 11111101001110011 1 1101101101010111 11111111101 011011110111011110 1001011 1101011111111010 10010 111111110110110110 111010 011101001011011 110101 01101100101111101 110111011 011111110111101 101001 1011 01010011110 10101001 011111001010111 111111110 11011110101111111 01101 10101110111111101 01001010 1111 1011 1011010111101010110 010100 1010110111101 101010101101010 11001100100101110 0101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,753 |
Words | 335 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 21, 9, 7 |
Lines Amount | 37 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 460 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 109 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:40 min read
- 122 Views
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"Now Returned Home" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 Sep. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32827/now-returned-home>.
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