Analysis of The Cup of Life
Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)
One after one the high emotions fade;
Time's wheeling measure empties and refills
Year after year; we seek no more the hills
That lured our youth divine and unafraid,
But swarming on some common highway, made
Beaten and smooth, plod onward with blind feet
And only where the crowded crossways meet
We halt and question, anxious and dismayed.
Yet can we not escape it; some we know
Have angered and grown mad, some scornfully laughed;
Yet surely to each lip--to mine to thin--
Comes with strange scent and pallid poisonous glow
The cup of Life, that dull Circean draught,
That taints us all, and turns the half to swine.
Scheme | ABBAACCADEFDEG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101010101 1101010001 1101111101 1110101001 110111011 1001110111 010101011 1101010001 1111011111 110011111 1101111111 11110101001 01111111 1111010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 614 |
Words | 111 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 14 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 492 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 109 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 108 Views
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"The Cup of Life" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3690/the-cup-of-life>.
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