Analysis of The Lay Of The Mountain
Friedrich Schiller 1759 (Marbach am Neckar) – 1805 (Weimar)
To the solemn abyss leads the terrible path,
The life and death winding dizzy between;
In thy desolate way, grim with menace and wrath,
To daunt thee the spectres of giants are seen;
That thou wake not the wild one, all silently tread--
Let thy lip breathe no breath in the pathway of dread!
High over the marge of the horrible deep
Hangs and hovers a bridge with its phantom-like span,
Not by man was it built, o'er the vastness to sweep;
Such thought never came to the daring of man!
The stream roars beneath--late and early it raves--
But the bridge, which it threatens, is safe from the waves.
Black-yawning a portal, thy soul to affright,
Like the gate to the kingdom, the fiend for the king--
Yet beyond it there smiles but a land of delight,
Where the autumn in marriage is met with the spring.
From a lot which the care and the trouble assail,
Could I fly to the bliss of that balm-breathing vale!
Through that field, from a fount ever hidden their birth,
Four rivers in tumult rush roaringly forth;
They fly to the fourfold divisions of earth--
The sunrise, the sunset, the south, and the north.
And, true to the mystical mother that bore,
Forth they rush to their goal, and are lost evermore.
High over the races of men in the blue
Of the ether, the mount in twin summits is riven;
There, veiled in the gold-woven webs of the dew,
Moves the dance of the clouds--the pale daughters of heaven!
There, in solitude, circles their mystical maze,
Where no witness can hearken, no earthborn surveys.
August on a throne which no ages can move,
Sits a queen, in her beauty serene and sublime,
The diadem blazing with diamonds above
The glory of brows, never darkened by time,
His arrows of light on that form shoots the sun--
And he gilds them with all, but he warms them with none!
Scheme | ABABCC DEDEFF CGXGHH IJIJKK LMLMNN XOXOMM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001101001 0101101001 011001111001 1110111011 111101111001 11111100111 11001101001 101001111011 1111111001011 11101101011 01101101011 101111011101 1100101111 101101001101 101111101101 101001011101 101101001001 111101111101 111101101011 110010111 11101101011 010101001 01101001011 11111101110 11001011001 1010010110110 11001101101 1011010110110 10101011001 1110111101 10101111011 101001001001 0101011001 01011101011 11011111101 011111111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,769 |
Words | 329 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 39 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 232 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:39 min read
- 110 Views
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