Analysis of A Lonely Moment.
Sarah Chauncey Woolsey 1835 (Cleveland) – 1905
I sit alone in the gray,
The snow falls thick and fast,
And never a sound have I heard all day
But the wailing of the blast,
And the hiss and click of the snow, whirling to and fro.
There seems no living thing
Left in the world but I;
My thoughts fly forth on restless wing,
And drift back wearily,
Storm-beaten, buffeted, hopeless, and almost dead.
No one there is to care;
Not one to even know
Of the lonely day and the dull despair
As the hours ebb and flow,
Slow lingering, as fain to lengthen out my pain.
And I think of the monks of old,
Each in his separate cell,
Hearing no sound, except when tolled
The stated convent bell.
How could they live and bear that silence everywhere?
And I think of tumbling seas,
'Neath cruel, lonely skies;
And shipwrecked sailors over these
Stretching their hungry eyes,--
Eyes dimmed with wasting tears for weary years on years,--
Pacing the hopeless sand,
Wistful and wan and pale,
Each foam-flash like a beckoning hand,
Each wave a glancing sail,
And so for days and days, and still the sail delays.
I hide my eyes in vain,
In vain I try to smile;
That urging vision comes again,
The sailor on his isle,
With none to hear his cry, to help him live--or die!
And with the pang a thought
Breaks o'er me like the sun,
Of the great listening Love which caught
Those accents every one,
Nor lost one faintest word, but always, always heard.
The monk his vigil pale
Could lighten with a smile,
The sailor's courage need not fail
Upon his lonely isle;
For there, as here, by sea or land, the pitying Lord stood
close at hand.
O coward heart of mine!
When storms shall beat again,
Hold firmly to this thought divine,
As anchorage in pain:
That, lonely though thou seemest to be, the Lord is near,
remembering thee.
Scheme | ABABC DEDFX GCGCH IJIJG KLKLX MNMNX HOPOE XQXQX NONOXM RPRHXF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101001 011101 0100111111 1010101 0010110110101 111101 100111 11111101 011100 1100110011 111111 111101 1010100101 1010101 110011110111 01110111 101101 10110111 010101 11110111010 01111001 110101 0110101 101101 111101110111 100101 100101 111101001 110101 011101010101 111101 011111 11010101 010111 111111111111 010101 1101101 101100111 1101001 1111011111 011101 110101 01010111 011101 11111111010011 111 110111 111101 11011101 110001 110111110111 01001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,722 |
Words | 337 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 52 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 135 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on April 18, 2023
- 1:41 min read
- 10 Views
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"A Lonely Moment." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/56680/a-lonely-moment.>.
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