Analysis of Dante, Shakespeare, Milton - From
Sydney Thompson Dobell 1824 (Kent) – 1874
Doctor. Ah! thou, too,
Sad Alighieri, like a waning moon
Setting in storm behind a grove of bays!
Balder. Yes, the great Florentine, who wove his web
And thrust it into hell, and drew it forth
Immortal, having burn’d all that could burn,
And leaving only what shall still be found
Untouch’d, nor with the small of fire upon it,
Under the final ashes of this world.
Doctor. Shakespeare and Milton!
Balder. Switzerland and home.
I ne’er see Milton, but I see the Alps,
As once, sole standing on a peak supreme,
To the extremest verge summit and gulf
I saw, height after depth, Alp beyond Alp,
O’er which the rising and the sinking soul
Sails into distance, heaving as a ship
O’er a great sea that sets to strands unseen.
And as the mounting and descending bark,
Borne on exulting by the under deep,
Gains of the wild wave something not the wave,
Catches a joy of going, and a will
Resistless, and upon the last lee foam
Leaps into air beyond it, so the soul
upon the Alpine ocean mountain-toss’d,
Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged
To darkness, and still wet with drops of death
Held into light eternal, and again
Cast down, to be again uplift in vast
And infinite succession, cannot stay
The mad momentum, but in frenzied sight
Of horizontal clouds and mists and skies
And the untried Inane, springs on the surge
Of things, and passing matter by a force
Material, thro’ vacuity careers,
Rising and falling.
Doctor. And my Shakespeare! Call
Milton your Alps, and which is he among
The tops of Andes? Keep your Paradise,
And Eves, and Adams, but give me the Earth
That Shakespeare drew, and make it grave and gay
With Shakespeare’s men and women; let me laugh
Or weep with them, and you—a wager,—aye,
A wager by my faith—either his muse
Was the recording angel, or that hand
Cherubic, which fills up the Book of Life,
Caught what the last relaxing gripe let fall
By a death-bed at Stratford, and hence-forth
Holds Shakespeare’s pen. Now strain your sinews, poet,
And top your Pelion,—Milton Switzerland,
And English Shakespeare—
Balder. This dear English land!
This happy England, loud with brooks and birds,
Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees,
And bloom’d from hill to dell; but whose best flowers
Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair
Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods
The pulsing torrent of a nation’s heart:
Whose forests stronger than her native oaks
Are living men; and whose unfathom’d lakes
Forever calm the unforgotten dead
In quiet graveyards willow’d seemly round,
O’er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face.
Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old
Thro’ unremember’d years, around whose base
The ever-surging peoples roll and roar
Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas
That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains,
Souls that from this mere footing of the earth
Lift their great virtues thro’ all clouds of Fate
Up to the very heavens, and make them rise
To keep the gods above us!
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111 1110101 1001010111 10101101111 0110110111 0101011111 0101011111 11101110011 1001010111 101010 1010001 1111011101 1111010101 10111001 1111011011 1101000101 1011010101 1011111101 0101000101 1101010101 1101110101 1001110001 10010111 1011011101 010110101 01010111001 1100111111 1011010001 1111011001 0100010101 0101010101 101010101 0001011101 1101010101 01001101 10010 100111 1011011101 011101110 0101011101 111011101 111010111 1111010101 0101111011 1001010111 0101110111 1101010111 1011110011 111111110 011110100 0101 1011101 1101011101 1011011101 01111111110 1100010111 1101111101 0101010101 1101010101 11010111 0101011 0101111 1111110111 111101011 1110111 0101010101 01001010101 11011100110 1111110101 1111011111 11010100111 1101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 3,075 |
Words | 517 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 72 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 2,312 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 543 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:35 min read
- 136 Views
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"Dante, Shakespeare, Milton - From" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/35876/dante%2C-shakespeare%2C-milton---from>.
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