Analysis of Come down, O Maid
Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809 – 1892
COME down, O maid, from yonder mountain height:
What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendour of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the silver horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roll the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQHRSTUVWXYZ1 2 3 4 |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111110101 1101010101 010101101 11111101001 110110101 1101010101 0111110101 1111010111 011101011 1101110001 111110101 110011111 1101010101 1111100101 1111010111 1100101011 110101111 1101010111 1110010101 1101010101 0101011101 11011100101 1101010101 1111111101 0111010101 0111010101 11010111001 10111100111 111100101 0111001001 01001010001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,345 |
Words | 250 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 31 |
Lines Amount | 31 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,043 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 248 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 17, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 94 Views
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