Analysis of In The Churchyard At Cambridge. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
In the village churchyard she lies,
Dust is in her beautiful eyes,
No more she breathes, nor feels, nor stirs;
At her feet and at her head
Lies a slave to attend the dead,
But their dust is white as hers.
Was she a lady of high degree,
So much in love with the vanity
And foolish pomp of this world of ours?
Or was it Christian charity,
And lowliness and humility,
The richest and rarest of all dowers?
Who shall tell us? No one speaks;
No color shoots into those cheeks,
Either of anger or of pride,
At the rude question we have asked;
Nor will the mystery be unmasked
By those who are sleeping at her side.
Hereafter?--And do you think to look
On the terrible pages of that Book
To find her failings, faults, and errors?
Ah, you will then have other cares,
In your own short-comings and despairs,
In your own secret sins and terrors!
Scheme | AABCCB DDBDDX EEFGGF HHBIIB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0010111 11001001 11111111 1010101 10110101 1111110 110101101 110110100 0101111110 11110100 0100100 010010111 1111111 11010111 10110111 10110111 110100101 111110101 010011111 1010010111 110101010 11111101 011110001 011101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 823 |
Words | 162 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 162 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 48 sec read
- 88 Views
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"In The Churchyard At Cambridge. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18638/in-the-churchyard-at-cambridge.-%28birds-of-passage.-flight-the-first%29>.
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