Analysis of A Sign-Seeker
Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)
I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
The day-tides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
I view the evening bonfires of the sun
On hills where morning rains have hissed;
The eyeless countenance of the mist
Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.
I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
The caldrons of the sea in storm,
Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm,
And trodden where abysmal fires and snowcones are.
I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
The coming of eccentric orbs;
To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.
I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;
Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;
Death's soothing finger, sorrow's smart;
--All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.
But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense--
Those sights of which old prophets tell,
Those signs the general word so well,
Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my watchings tense.
In graveyard green, behind his monument
To glimpse a phantom parent, friend,
Wearing his smile, and "Not the end!"
Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment;
Or, if a dead Love's lips, whom dreams reveal
When midnight imps of King Decay
Delve sly to solve me back to clay,
Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;
Or, when Earth's Frail lie bleeding of her Strong,
If some Recorder, as in Writ,
Near to the weary scene should flit
And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.
--There are who, rapt to heights of trancéd trust,
These tokens claim to feel and see,
Read radiant hints of times to be--
Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.
Such scope is granted not my powers indign...
I have lain in dead men's beds, have walked
The tombs of those with whom I'd talked,
Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,
And panted for response. But none replies;
No warnings loom, nor whisperings
To open out my limitings,
And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.
Scheme | ABBA CDDC EXXE FFXF GHHG IJJI KLLK MNNM OPPO QRRQ CSSX TFFT |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (83%) |
Metre | 110101101 01110101 110111 010010010110001 1101010101 11110111 010100101 1101010111 11101010101 0110101 1101101 010101010011 11110101 01010101 11010101 1101010101101 1101011101 01010101 1101011 1011001110101 1111111111 11111101 110100111 111101111 011011100 11010101 10110101 1101010100 1101111101 1111101 11111111 111111010101 1111110101 11010101 11010111 011111110101 1111111111 11011101 110011111 111101010111 1111011101 111011111 01111111 1100101011101 0101011101 110111 110111 01110101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,297 |
Words | 364 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 134 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:51 min read
- 170 Views
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"A Sign-Seeker" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36310/a-sign-seeker>.
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