Analysis of A Souless Singer
Alfred Austin 1835 (Leeds) – 1913 (Ashford)
Hail! throstle, by thy ringing voice descried,
Not by the wanderings of the tuneless wing!
Now once again where forkëd boughs divide,
Lost in green leafage thou dost perch and sing:
Trilling, shrilling, far and wide,
``It is Spring.''
Thy matins peal long ere the rosy dawn
Unfolds its hull and burgeons into light;
Nor cease thy vespers till from darkling lawn
The silent shadows steal away in flight,
And the star-lit tent is drawn
Round the Night.
Is it in Heaven, or mid-way of the Earth,
Thou learn'st to outvoice, outnumber all the Nine?
What is the secret of thy madcap mirth?
Wilt thou not tell it me, and make it mine?
What is all my singing worth,
Matched with thine?
If heedless mortals only understood
What the prerogatives of real renown,
Hearing thee warble in umbrageous wood,
Or in the dingles of the rolling down,
It is thou, not I, that should
Wear the Crown.
And yet perchance more deep and more divine
The insufficiency of my poor strain.
One single solitary note is thine:
Weak though they haply be, yet I have twain.
Joy is all thy song; of mine
Half is pain.
Thou with thy carol flatterest the Year
But when it frolics into happy bloom:
Only those notes hast thou, wild chanticleer,
That with their thoughtlessness can banish gloom
From its cradle; I, a tear
For its tomb.
Thou with the blossom and bud and baby leaf,
Heartless of woe, dost revel and rejoice,
But for sere sorrow and the pensive sheaf
Lackest, for all thy minstrelsy, the voice:
There are seasons when sweet grief
Is our choice.
So, throstle, be the very voice of Spring,
And bring back rapture to the wrinkled bole!
Of all life's chords joy is the leading string,
And happiness is much, but not the whole.
Leave it then to me to sing
To the soul!
Scheme | ABABAB CACACA DEDEDE AFAFAF EGEGEG HIHIXI JKJKJK BLBLBL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111011 1101001011 1101111101 101111101 101101 111 111110101 011101011 11111111 010110101 0011111 101 11010111101 11111010101 110101111 1111110111 1111101 111 11101001 1001001101 10110011 100110101 1111111 101 0101110101 011111 110100111 111111111 1111111 111 11110101 111101101 10111111 11111101 1110101 111 11010010101 1011110001 1111000101 1111101 1110111 1101 111010111 0111010101 1111110101 0100111101 1111111 101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,699 |
Words | 319 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 170 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:36 min read
- 80 Views
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"A Souless Singer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/654/a-souless-singer>.
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