Analysis of Cadland, Southampton River
William Lisle Bowles 1762 (King's Sutton) – 1850
If ever sea-maid, from her coral cave,
Beneath the hum of the great surge, has loved
To pass delighted from her green abode,
And, seated on a summer bank, to sing
No earthly music; in a spot like this,
The bard might feign he heard her, as she dried
Her golden hair, yet dripping from the main,
In the slant sunbeam.
So the pensive bard
Might image, warmed by this enchanting scene,
The ideal form; but though such things are not,
He who has ever felt a thought refined;
He who has wandered on the sea of life,
Forming delightful visions of a home
Of beauty and repose; he who has loved,
With filial warmth his country, will not pass
Without a look of more than tenderness
On all the scene; from where the pensile birch
Bends on the bank, amid the clustered group
Of the dark hollies; to the woody shore
That steals diminished, to the distant spires
Of Hampton, crowning the long lucid wave.
White in the sun, beneath the forest-shade,
Full shines the frequent sail, like Vanity,
As she goes onward in her glittering trim,
Amid the glances of life's transient morn,
Calling on all to view her!
Vectis there,
That slopes its greensward to the lambent wave,
And shows through softest haze its woods and domes,
With gray St Catherine's creeping to the sky,
Seems like a modest maid, who charms the more
Concealing half her beauties.
To the East,
Proud, yet complacent, on its subject realm,
With masts innumerable thronged, and hulls
Seen indistinct, but formidable, mark
Albion's vast fleet, that, like the impatient storm,
Waits but the word to thunder and flash death
On him who dares approach to violate
The shores and living scenes that smile secure
Beneath its dragon-watch!
Long may they smile!
And long, majestic Albion (while the sound
From East to West, from Albis to the Po,
Of dark contention hurtles), may'st thou rest,
As calm and beautiful this sylvan scene
Looks on the refluent wave that steals below.
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101110101 0101101111 1101010101 0101010111 1101000111 0111110111 0101110101 0011 10101 1101110101 0011111111 1111010101 1111010111 1001010101 1100011111 11001110111 0101111100 110111011 1101010101 1011010101 1101010101 1101001101 1001010101 1101011100 11110001001 0101011101 1011110 11 11111011 0111011101 1111010101 1101011101 0101010 101 1101011011 1101000101 1001110001 1111100101 1101110011 1111011100 0101011101 011101 1111 01010100101 111111101 1101011111 1101001101 110111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,880 |
Words | 341 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 48 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,510 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 339 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:43 min read
- 75 Views
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"Cadland, Southampton River" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/40862/cadland%2C-southampton-river>.
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