Analysis of Despondency
Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)
Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,
The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,
With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;
Time, whose inexorable destinies
Bear down upon us like impending seas;
And the huge presence of the world, at best
A sightless giant wandering without rest,
Aged and mad with many miseries.
The weight and measure of these things who knows?
Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream,
Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,
We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,
Save for the certain nearness of its woes,
Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.
Scheme | ABBAABBA CDCDCD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Petrarchan sonnet (93%) |
Metre | 1100110101 00101101 110111 111000100 1101110101 0011010111 0110100011 101110100 0101011111 1011011111 100110101 110101111 110101111 10110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 598 |
Words | 99 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 245 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 30 sec read
- 93 Views
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"Despondency" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3627/despondency>.
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