Analysis of To William Shelley
I.
The billows on the beach are leaping around it,
The bark is weak and frail,
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it
Darkly strew the gale.
Come with me, thou delightful child,
Come with me, though the wave is wild,
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.
II.
They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
They have made them unfit for thee;
They have withered the smile and dried the tear
Which should have been sacred to me.
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,
And they will curse my name and thee
Because we fearless are and free.
III.
Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still
Near thy sweet mother’s anxious heart,
Which thou with joy shalt fill,
With fairest smiles of wonder thrown
On that which is indeed our own,
And which in distant lands will be
The dearest playmate unto thee.
IV.
Fear not the tyrants will rule for ever,
Or the priests of the evil faith;
They stand on the brink of that raging river,
Whose waves they have tainted with death.
It is fed from the depth of a thousand dells,
Around them it foams and rages and swells;
And their swords and their sceptres I floating see,
Like wrecks on the surge of eternity.
V.
Rest, rest, and shriek not, thou gentle child!
The rocking of the boat thou fearest,
And the cold spray and the clamour wild?--
There, sit between us two, thou dearest--
Me and thy mother--well we know
The storm at which thou tremblest so,
With all its dark and hungry graves,
Less cruel than the savage slaves
Who hunt us o’er these sheltering waves.
VI.
This hour will in thy memory
Be a dream of days forgotten long.
We soon shall dwell by the azure sea
Of serene and golden Italy,
Or Greece, the Mother of the free;
And I will teach thine infant tongue
To call upon those heroes old
In their own language, and will mould
Thy growing spirit in the flame
Of Grecian lore, that by such name
A patriot’s birthright thou mayst claim!
Scheme | ABCBCDDEE AXFXFGGFF AHIHIJJFF XKXKXLLFF FDBDXXLLLL AFXFFFXMMNNN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1 010101110011 011101 0111001111 10101 11110101 11110111 001111111 10110111101 1 11101100101 11110111 1110010101 11111011 101100111 11111011 01111101 01110101 1 1101111 01011 11110101 111111 11011101 111101101 01010111 0101101 1 1101011110 10110101 11101111010 11111011 11110110101 0111101001 0110111101 1110110100 1 110111101 01010111 00110011 110111110 10110111 0111111 11110101 11010101 111111001 1 110101100 101110101 111110101 101010100 11010101 01111101 11011101 01110011 11010001 11011111 01001111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,951 |
Words | 379 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 12 |
Lines Amount | 58 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 259 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 63 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 18, 2023
- 1:53 min read
- 171 Views
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"To William Shelley" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29327/to-william-shelley>.
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