Analysis of Tis The Set Of The Sail -- Or -- One Ship Sails East

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855 (Janesville) – 1919



But to every mind there openeth,
A way, and way, and away,
A high soul climbs the highway,
And the low soul gropes the low,
And in between on the misty flats,
The rest drift to and fro.

But to every man there openeth,
A high way and a low,
And every mind decideth,
The way his soul shall go.

One ship sails East,
And another West,
By the self-same winds that blow,
'Tis the set of the sails
And not the gales,
That tells the way we go.

Like the winds of the sea
Are the waves of time,
As we journey along through life,
'Tis the set of the soul,
That determines the goal,
And not the calm or the strife.


Scheme ABBCXC ACAC XXCDDC XXEFFE
Poetic Form
Metre 11100111 0101001 011101 0011101 000110101 011101 11100111 011001 010011 011111 1111 00101 1011111 101101 0101 110111 101101 10111 11100111 101101 101001 0101101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 590
Words 125
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 6, 4, 6, 6
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 114
Words per stanza (avg) 31
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

37 sec read
1,168

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was an American author and poet. more…

All Ella Wheeler Wilcox poems | Ella Wheeler Wilcox Books

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