Analysis of The Sea
Barry Cornwall 1787 (Leeds, Yorkshire) – 1874 (London)
THE SEA! the sea! the open sea!
The blue, the fresh, the ever free!
Without a mark, without a bound,
It runneth the earth’s wide regions round;
It plays with the clouds; it mocks the skies;
Or like a cradled creature lies.
I ’m on the sea! I ’m on the sea!
I am where I would ever be;
With the blue above, and the blue below,
And silence wheresoe’er I go;
If a storm should come and awake the deep,
What matter? I shall ride and sleep.
I love, O, how I love to ride
On the fierce, foaming, bursting tide,
When every mad wave drowns the moon
Or whistles aloft his tempest tune,
And tells how goeth the world below,
And why the sou’west blasts do blow.
I never was on the dull, tame shore,
But I lov’d the great sea more and more,
And backwards flew to her billowy breast,
Like a bird that seeketh its mother’s nest;
And a mother she was, and is, to me;
For I was born on the open sea!
The waves were white, and red the morn,
In the noisy hour when I was born;
And the whale it whistled, the porpoise roll’d,
And the dolphins bared their backs of gold;
And never was heard such an outcry wild
As welcom’d to life the ocean-child!
I ’ve liv’d since then, in calm and strife,
Full fifty summers, a sailor’s life,
With wealth to spend and a power to range,
But never have sought nor sighed for change;
And Death, whenever he comes to me,
Shall come on the wild, unbounded sea!
Scheme | AABBCC AADDEE FFGGDD HHIIAAJ JBXKK LLMMAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01010101 01010101 01010101 11011101 111011101 1101101 1110111101 11111101 1010100101 010111 1011100101 11011101 11111111 10110101 110011101 110011101 01110101 0101111 110110111 111011101 01011011 101111101 0010110111 111110101 01010101 0010101111 0011100101 001011111 010111111 11110101 111110101 110100101 1111001011 110111111 010101111 111010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,432 |
Words | 272 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 7, 5, 6 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 172 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 328 Views
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"The Sea" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4225/the-sea>.
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