Analysis of Prelude
Algernon Charles Swinburne 1837 (London) – 1909 (London)
Between the green bud and the red
Youth sat and sang by Time, and shed
From eyes and tresses flowers and tears,
From heart and spirit hopes and fears,
Upon the hollow stream whose bed
Is channelled by the foamless years;
And with the white the gold-haired head
Mixed running locks, and in Time's ears
Youth's dreams hung singing, and Time's truth
Was half not harsh in the ears of Youth.
Between the bud and the blown flower
Youth talked with joy and grief an hour,
With footless joy and wingless grief
And twin-born faith and disbelief
Who share the seasons to devour;
And long ere these made up their sheaf
Felt the winds round him shake and shower
The rose-red and the blood-red leaf,
Delight whose germ grew never grain,
And passion dyed in its own pain.
Then he stood up, and trod to dust
Fear and desire, mistrust and trust,
And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet,
And bound for sandals on his feet
Knowledge and patience of what must
And what things may be, in the heat
And cold of years that rot and rust
And alter; and his spirit's meat
Was freedom, and his staff was wrought
Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought.
For what has he whose will sees clear
To do with doubt and faith and fear,
Swift hopes and slow despondencies?
His heart is equal with the sea's
And with the sea-wind's, and his ear
Is level to the speech of these,
And his soul communes and takes cheer
With the actual earth's equalities,
Air, light, and night, hills, winds, and streams,
And seeks not strength from strengthless dreams.
His soul is even with the sun
Whose spirit and whose eye are one,
Who seeks not stars by day, nor light
And heavy heat of day by night.
Him can no God cast down, whom none
Can lift in hope beyond the height
Of fate and nature and things done
By the calm rule of might and right
That bids men be and bear and do,
And die beneath blind skies or blue.
To him the lights of even and morn
Speak no vain things of love or scorn,
Fancies and passions miscreate
By man in things dispassionate.
Nor holds he fellowship forlorn
With souls that pray and hope and hate,
And doubt they had better not been born,
And fain would lure or scare off fate
And charm their doomsman from their doom
And make fear dig its own false tomb.
He builds not half of doubts and half
Of dreams his own soul's cenotaph,
Whence hopes and fears with helpless eyes,
Wrapt loose in cast-off cerecloths, rise
And dance and wring their hands and laugh,
And weep thin tears and sigh light sighs,
And without living lips would quaff
The living spring in man that lies,
And drain his soul of faith and strength
It might have lived on a life's length.
He hath given himself and hath not sold
To God for heaven or man for gold,
Or grief for comfort that it gives,
Or joy for grief's restoratives.
He hath given himself to time, whose fold
Shuts in the mortal flock that lives
On its plain pasture's heat and cold
And the equal year's alternatives.
Earth, heaven, and time, death, life, and he,
Endure while they shall be to be.
"Yet between death and life are hours
To flush with love and hide in flowers;
What profit save in these?" men cry:
"Ah, see, between soft earth and sky,
What only good things here are ours!"
They say, "what better wouldst thou try,
What sweeter sing of? or what powers
Serve, that will give thee ere thou die
More joy to sing and be less sad,
More heart to play and grow more glad?"
Play then and sing; we too have played,
We likewise, in that subtle shade.
We too have twisted through our hair
Such tendrils as the wild Loves wear,
And heard what mirth the Maenads made,
Till the wind blew our garlands bare
And left their roses disarrayed,
And smote the summer with strange air,
And disengirdled and discrowned
The limbs and locks that vine-wreaths bound.
We too have tracked by star-proof trees
The tempest of the Thyiades
Scare the loud night on hills that hid
The blood-feasts of the Bassarid,
Heard their song's iron cadences
Fright the wolf hungering from the kid,
Outroar the lion-throated seas,
Outchide the north-wind if it chid,
And hush the torrent-tongued ravines
With thunders of their tambourines.
But the fierce flute whose notes acclaim
Dim goddesses of fiery fame,
Cymbal and clamorous kettledrum,
Timbrels and tabrets, all are
Scheme | AABCACACDD EEFFEFEFGG HHIIHIHIJJ KKBLXLKBMM NNOONONOPP QQAXQRQRSS TFUUTUFUVV WWXBWXWXYY ZZ1 1 Z1 Z1 2 2 3 3 4 4 3 4 A4 AX LB5 AX5 LAXB 6 6 SX |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01011001 11011101 110101001 11010101 01010111 111011 01010111 11010011 11110011 111100111 010100110 111101110 111011 0111001 110101010 01111111 101111010 01100111 01111101 01010111 11110111 100100101 01110101 01110111 10010111 01111001 01111101 01001101 11001111 110111011 11111111 11110101 11011 11110101 01011011 11010111 01110011 1010011 11011101 0111111 11110101 11001111 11111111 01011111 11111111 11010101 11010011 10111101 11110101 01011111 110111001 11111111 100101 11010100 1111001 11110101 011110111 01111111 0111111 01111111 11111101 111111 11011101 1101111 01011101 01110111 00110111 01010111 01111101 11111011 1110010111 111101111 11110111 11111 1110011111 10010111 1111101 001010100 110011101 01111111 101101110 111101010 11010111 11011101 110111110 11110111 110111110 11111111 11110111 11110111 11011111 1101101 111101101 1110111 0111011 10111011 011101 01010111 0101 01011111 11111111 010101 10111111 011101 11110100 101100101 1010101 1011111 01010101 110111 10111101 110011001 10011 10111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 4,226 |
Words | 783 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 4 |
Lines Amount | 114 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 279 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 65 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:58 min read
- 60 Views
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"Prelude" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1382/prelude>.
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