Analysis of A Dream Of Resurrection
Dinah Maria Mulock Craik 1826 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire) – 1887 (Shortlands, London)
SO heavenly beautiful it lay,
It was less like a human corse
Than that fair shape in which perforce
A lost hope clothes itself alway.
The dream showed very plain: the bed
Where that known unknown face reposed,--
A woman's face with eyelids closed,
A something precious that was dead;
A something, lost on this side life,
By which the mourner came and stood,
And laid down, ne'er to be indued,
All flaunting robes of earthly strife;
Shred off, like votive locks of hair,
Youth's ornaments of pride and strength,
And cast them in their golden length
The silence of that bier to share.
No tears fell,--but with gazings long
Lorn memory tried to print that face
On the heart's ever-vacant place,
With a sun-finger, sharp and strong.--
Then kisses, dropping without sound,
And solemn arms wound round the dead,
And lifting from the natural bed
Into the coffin's strange new bound.
Yet still no farewell, or belief
In death, no more than one believes
In some dread truth that sudden weaves
The whole world in a shroud of grief.
And still unanswered kisses; still
Warm clingings to the image cold
With an incredulous faith's close fold,
Creative in its fierce 'I will.'
Hush,--hush! the marble eyelids move,
The kissed lips quiver into breath:
Avaunt, thou mockery of Death!
Avaunt!--we are conquerors, I and Love.
Corpse of dead Hope, awake, arise,
A living Hope that only slept
Until the tears thus overwept
Had washed the blindness from our eyes.
Come back into the upper day:
Pluck off these cerements. Patient shroud,
We'll wrap thee as a garment proud
Round the fair shape we thought was clay.
Clasp, arms; cling, soul; eyes, drink anew
The beauty that returns with breath:
Faith, that out-loved this trance-like death,
May see this resurrection too.
Scheme | ABBX CCXC DXCD EFFE GHHG ICCI JKKJ LMML XNNX OXCO APPA QNNQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (75%) |
Metre | 110010011 11110101 11110101 0111011 01110101 1110111 0101111 01010111 01011111 11010101 0111111 11011101 1111111 11001101 01101101 01011111 1111111 110011111 10110101 10110101 11010011 01011101 010101001 0101111 1111101 01111101 01111101 01100111 0110101 1110101 110100111 01001111 1101011 01110011 1110011 111100101 11110101 01011101 010111 110101101 11010101 1111101 11110101 10111111 11111101 01010111 11111111 1110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,757 |
Words | 308 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 114 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:34 min read
- 127 Views
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"A Dream Of Resurrection" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7964/a-dream-of-resurrection>.
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