Analysis of Singers to Come
Alice Meynell 1847 (London) – 1922
New delights to our desire
The singers of the past can yield.
I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
poets unborn and unrevealed.
Singers to come, what thoughts will start
To song? What words of yours be sent
Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These words of nature and the heart
Await you like an instrument.
Who knows what musical flocks of words
Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
And crown these towers in circling flight,
And cross these seas like summer birds,
And give a voice to the day and night?
Something of you already is ours;
Some mystic part of you belongs
To us whose dream of your future throngs,
Who look on hills, and trees, and flowers,
Which will mean so much in your songs.
I wonder, like the maid who found,
And knelt to lift, the lyre supreme
Of Orpheus from the Thracian stream.
She dreams on its sealed past profound;
On a deep future sealed I dream.
She bears it in her wanderings
Within her arms, and has not pressed
Her unskilled fingers but her breast
Upon those silent sacred strings;
I, too, clasp mystic strings at rest.
For I, i' the world of lands and seas,
The sky of wind and rain and fire,
And in man's world of long desire--
In all that is yet dumb in these--
Have found a mysterious lyre.
Scheme | ABBCB DXBDX EFFEF GHHGH IJJIJ KLLKL MAAMC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 101110010 01010111 11111101 01011111 101101 10111111 11111111 11101111 11110001 01111100 111100111 01111111 0111001001 01111101 010110101 1011010110 11011101 111111101 111101010 11111011 11010111 01110101 11001011 11111101 10110111 11100100 01010111 00110101 01110101 11110111 111011101 011101010 001111010 01111101 11001001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,276 |
Words | 243 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 142 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 34 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 107 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Singers to Come" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1546/singers-to-come>.
Discuss this Alice Meynell poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In