Analysis of Hymn to the North Star
William Cullen Bryant 1794 (Cummington) – 1878 (New York City)
The sad and solemn night
Hath yet her multitude of cheerful fires;
The glorious host of light
Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires;
All through her silent watches, gliding slow,
Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.
Day, too, hath many a star
To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they:
Through the blue fields afar,
Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:
Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.
And thou dost see them rise,
Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set.
Alone, in thy cold skies,
Thou keep'st thy old unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.
There, at morn's rosy birth,
Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air,
And eve, that round the earth
Chases the day, beholds thee watching there;
There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls
The shapes of polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.
Alike, beneath thine eye,
The deeds of darkness and of light are done;
High towards the star-lit sky
Towns blaze--the smoke of battle blots the sun--
The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud--
And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.
On thy unaltering blaze
The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,
Fixes his steady gaze,
And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast;
And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night,
Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.
And, therefore, bards of old,
Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,
Did in thy beams behold
A beauteous type of that unchanging good,
That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray
The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.
Scheme | AXAXBB CDCDEE FGFGHH IJIJKK LMLMNN OXOXAA PQPQDD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010101 1101011010 0100111 101101101 1101010101 001010101001 1111001 1111011111 101101 0111001101 1001110111 1101001010111 011111 1101011111 010111 111111101 111010111001 111101001101 111101 111010101 011101 100111101 1111001011 0111011110101 010111 0111001111 1010111 1101110101 0111010111 001111110101 1111 0111001101 101101 01110101 01110100111 11111111111 01111 1001010101 101101 011110101 1101010111 01001111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,676 |
Words | 304 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 191 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 01, 2023
- 1:32 min read
- 87 Views
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"Hymn to the North Star" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/40289/hymn-to-the-north-star>.
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