Analysis of The Ship Of Earth.

Sidney Lanier 1842 (Macon) – 1881 (Lynn)



'Thou Ship of Earth, with Death, and Birth, and Life, and Sex aboard,
And fires of Desires burning hotly in the hold,
I fear thee, O! I fear thee, for I hear the tongue and sword
At battle on the deck, and the wild mutineers are bold!

'The dewdrop morn may fall from off the petal of the sky,
But all the deck is wet with blood and stains the crystal red.
A pilot, GOD, a pilot! for the helm is left awry,
And the best sailors in the ship lie there among the dead!'


Scheme ABAB CDCD
Poetic Form Traditional rhyme
Quatrain 
Metre 11111101010101 01010101010001 11111111110101 1101010010111 0111111010101 11011111010101 01010101011101 00110001110101
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 466
Words 98
Sentences 6
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 4, 4
Lines Amount 8
Letters per line (avg) 44
Words per line (avg) 12
Letters per stanza (avg) 175
Words per stanza (avg) 48
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 06, 2023

29 sec read
399

Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier was a poet, writer, composer, critic, professor of literature at Johns Hopkins and first flutist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Baltiimore. He wrote the Centennial cantata for the opening ceremony of the 1876 Centennial celebration in Philadelphia. more…

All Sidney Lanier poems | Sidney Lanier Books

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