Analysis of The Islet And The Palm

Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)



O gentle sister spirit, when you smile
My soul is like a lonely coral isle,
An islet shadowed by a single palm,
Ringed round with reef and foam, but inly calm.

And all day long I listen to the speech
Of wind and water on my charmed beach:
I see far off beyond mine outer shore
The ocean flash, and hear his harmless roar.

And in the night-time when the glorious sun,
With all his life and all his light, is done,
The wind still murmurs in my slender tree,
And shakes the moonlight on the silver sea.


Scheme AABB CCDD EEFF
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 1101010111 1111010101 1101010101 111101111 0111110101 110101111 1111011101 0101011101 00011101001 1111011111 0111001101 010110101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 496
Words 100
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 129
Words per stanza (avg) 33
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
76

Archibald Lampman

Archibald Lampman FRSC was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in English." Lampman is classed as one of Canada's Confederation Poets, a group which also includes Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. more…

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