Analysis of In Westminster Abbey
Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1836 (Portsmouth) – 1907 (Boston)
"The Southern Transept, hardly known by any other name but Poets' Corner"
DEAN STANLEY
Tread softly here; the sacredest of tombs
Are those that hold your poets. Kings and queens
Are facile accidents of Time and Chance.
Chance sets them on the heights, they climb not there!
But he who from the darkling mass of men
Is on the wing of heavenly thought upborne
To finer ether, and becomes a voice
For all the voiceless, God annointed him:
His name shall be a star, his grave a shrine.
Tread softly here, in silent reverence tread.
Beneath those marble cenotaphs and urns
Lies richer dust than ever nature hid
Packed in the mountain's adamantine heart,
Or slyly wrapt in unsuspected sand--
The dross men toil for, and oft stain the soul.
How vain and all ignoble seems that greed
To him who stands in this dim claustral air
With these most sacred ashes at his feet!
This dust was Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden this--
The spark that once illumed it lingers still.
O ever-hallowed spot of English earth!
If the unleashed and unhappy spirit of man
Have option to visit our dull globe,
What august Shades at midnight here convene
In the miraculous sessions of the moon,
When the great pulse of London faintly throbs,
And one by one the stars in heaven pale!
Scheme | XX AXXBCCXXX XAXXXXXBXXXXXXXXAX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010110111010111010 110 11010111 1111110101 1101001101 1111011111 111101111 1101110011 1101000101 11010111 1111011101 11010101001 01110101 1101110101 1001011 110100101 0111101101 1101010111 111101111 1111010111 1111010101 011111101 1101011101 100100101011 1101101011 110111101 00010010101 1011110101 0111010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,249 |
Words | 224 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 9, 18 |
Lines Amount | 29 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 330 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 74 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:07 min read
- 58 Views
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"In Westminster Abbey" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36048/in-westminster-abbey>.
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