Analysis of The Sea to the Shell
The sea, my mother, is singing to me,
She is singing the old refrain,
Of passion, of love, and of mystery,
And her world-old song of pain;
Of the mirk midnight and the dazzling day,
That trail their robes o'er the wet sea-way.
The sea, my mother, is singing to me
With the white foam caught in her hair,
With the seaweed swinging its long arms free,
To grapple the blown sea air:
The sea, my mother, with billowy swell,
Is telling her tale to the wave-washed shell.
The sea, my mother, is singing to me,
With the starry gleam in her wave,
A dirge of the dead, of the sad, sad sea,
A requiem song of the brave;
Tenderly, sadly, the surges tell
Their tale of death to the wave-washed shell.
The sea, my mother, confides to me,
As she turns to the soft, round moon,
The secrets that lie where the spirits be,
That hide from the garish noon:
The sea, my mother, who loves me well,
Is telling their woe to the wave-washed shell.
O mother o' mine, with the foam-flecked hair,
O mother, I love and know
The heart that is sad and the soul that is bare
To your daughter of ebb and flow;
And I hold your whispers of Heaven and Hell
In the loving heart of a wave-washed shell.
Scheme | Ababcc Adadee Afafee agagee dhdhee |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (23%) |
Metre | 0111011011 11100101 1101101100 0011111 1011001001 1111100111 0111011011 10111001 101101111 1100111 01110111 1100110111 0111011011 10101001 0110110111 01001101 100100101 111110111 011100111 11110111 0101110101 1110101 011101111 1101110111 1101110111 1101101 01111001111 11101101 01111011001 0010110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,203 |
Words | 228 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 177 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 107 Views
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"The Sea to the Shell" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7912/the-sea-to-the-shell>.
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