Analysis of Upon the Late Storm
Edmund Waller 1606 (Coleshill) – 1687
[And Death of His Highness Ensuing the Same.]
We must resign! Heaven his great soul does claim
In storms, as loud as his immortal fame;
His dying groans, his last breath, shakes our isle,
And trees uncut fall for his funeral pile.
About his palace their broad roots are tossed
Into the air: So Romulus was lost.
New Rome in such a tempest missed her king,
And from obeying fell to worshipping.
On Oeta's top thus Hercules lay dead,
With ruined oaks and pines about him spread;
The poplar, too, whose bough he wont to wear
On his victorious head, lay prostrate there.
Those his last fury from the mountain rent;
Our dying hero from the continent
Ravished whole towns, and forts from Spaniards reft,
As his last legacy to Britain left.
The ocean, which so long our hopes confined,
Could give no limits to his vaster mind;
Our bounds' enlargement was his latest toil,
Nor hath he left us prisoners to our isle.
Under the tropic is our language spoke,
And part of Flanders hath received our yoke.
From civil broils he did us disengage,
Found nobler objects for our martial rage:
And, with wise conduct, to his country showed
Their ancient way of conquering abroad.
Ungrateful then, if we no tears allow
To him that gave us peace and empire too.
Princes, that feared him, grieve, concerned to see
No pitch of glory from the grave is free.
Nature herself took notice of his death,
And, sighing, swelled the sea with such a breath
That to remotest shores her billows rolled,
The approaching fate of her great ruler told.
Scheme | A AABBCCDDEEFFXXCXGGXBHHIIXXXXJJKKLL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 01111010001 11011011111 0111110101 11011111101 0111111001 0111011111 0101110011 1101010101 0101011100 11111011 1101010111 0101111111 11010011101 1111010101 10101010100 111011101 1111001101 01011110101 111101111 10101011101 111111001101 10010110101 01110101101 1101111001 11010110101 0110111101 1101110001 0101111101 11111101001 1011110111 1111010111 1001110111 0101011101 1101010101 00101101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,520 |
Words | 274 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 34 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 598 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 136 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:22 min read
- 24 Views
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"Upon the Late Storm" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9337/upon-the-late-storm>.
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