Analysis of The Dream Called Life
Edward Fitzgerald 1809 (Bredfield House) – 1883 (Merton, Norfolk)
From the Spanish of Pedro Calderon de la Barca
A dream it was in which I found myself.
And you that hail me now, then hailed me king,
In a brave palace that was all my own,
Within, and all without it, mine; until,
Drunk with excess of majesty and pride,
Methought I towered so big and swelled so wide
That of myself I burst the glittering bubble
Which my ambition had about me blown,
And all again was darkness. Such a dream
As this, in which I may be walking now,
Dispensing solemn justice to you shadows,
Who make believe to listen; but anon
Kings, princes, captains, warriors, plume and steel,
Aye, even with all your airy theatre,
May flit into the air you seem to rend
With acclamations, leaving me to wake
In the dark tower; or dreaming that I wake
From this that waking is; or this and that,
Both waking and both dreaming; such a doubt
Confounds and clouds our moral life about.
But whether wake or dreaming, this I know,
How dreamwise human glories come and go;
Whose momentary tenure not to break,
Walking as one who knows he soon may wake,
So fairly carry the full cup, so well
Disordered insolence and passion quell,
That there be nothing after to upbraid
Dreamer or doer in the part he played;
Whether tomorrow's dawn shall break the spell,
Or the last trumpet of the Eternal Day,
When dreaming, with the night, shall pass away.
Scheme | X XXAXBBXAXXXAXXBCCXDDEECCFFGGFHH |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10101101001110 011101111 0111111111 0011011111 0101011101 111110001 1110110111 11111010010 1101010111 0101110101 1101111101 0101010111 110111011 11010100101 11011110100 1101011111 1110111 00110110111 1111011101 1100110101 01011010101 1101110111 111010101 110010111 1011111111 1101001111 0101000101 111101011 101100111 100111101 10110100101 1101011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,317 |
Words | 250 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 31 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 526 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 124 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 96 Views
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