Analysis of The Weaver
Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)
All day, all day, round the clacking net
The weaver's fingers fly:
Gray dreams like frozen mists are set
In the hush of the weaver's eye;
A voice from the dusk is calling yet,
'Oh, come away, or we die!'
Without is a horror of hosts that fight,
That rest not, and cease not to kill,
The thunder of feet and the cry of the flight,
A slaughter weird and shrill;
Gray dreams are set in the weaver's sight,
The weaver is weaving still.
'Come away, dear soul, come away or we die;
Hear'st thou the moan and the rush! Come away;
The people are slain at the gates, and they fly;
The kind God hath left them this day;
The battle-axes cleaves, and the foemen cry,
And the red swords swing and slay.'
'Nay, wife, what boots to fly from pain,
When pain is wherever we fly?
And death is a sweeter thing than a chain:
'Tis sweeter to sleep than to cry,
The kind God giveth the days that wane;
If the kind God hath said it, I die.'
And the weaver wove, and the good wife fled,
And the city was made a tomb,
And a flame that shook from the rocks overhead
Shone into that silent room,
And touched like a wide red kiss on the dead
Brown weaver slain by his loom.
Yet I think that in some dim shadowy land,
Where no suns rise or set,
Where the ghost of a whilom loom doth stand
Round the dusk of its silken net,
Forever flyeth his shadowy hand,
And the weaver is weaving yet.
Scheme | ABABAB CDCDCD BEBEBE FBFBFB GHGHGH IAIAIA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111011 010101 11110111 00110101 011011101 1101111 0110101111 11101111 01011001101 010101 111100101 0101101 10111101111 11101001101 01011101011 01111111 0101010011 0011101 11111111 11101011 0110101101 11011111 011100111 101111111 0010100111 00101101 00111101101 1011101 0110111101 1101111 11110111001 111111 101101111 10111101 010111001 00101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,330 |
Words | 274 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 172 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:22 min read
- 62 Views
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"The Weaver" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3717/the-weaver>.
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