Analysis of Moving Through The Dew

Alfred Noyes 1880 (Wolverhampton) – 1958 (Isle of Wight)



I
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Ere I waken in the city—Life, thy dawn makes all things new!
And up a fir-clad glen, far from all the haunts of men,
Up a glen among the mountains, oh my feet are wings again!

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
O mountains of my boyhood, I come again to you,
By the little path I know, with the sea far below,
And above, the great cloud-galleons with their sails of rose and snow

As of old, when all was young, and the earth a song unsung
And the heather through the crimson dawn its Eden incense flung
From the mountain-heights of joy, for a careless-hearted boy,
And the lavrocks rose like fountain sprays of bliss that ne’er could cloy,

From their little beds of bloom, from the golden gorse and broom,
With a song to God the Giver, o’er that waste of wild perfume;
Blowing from height to height, in a glory of great light,
While the cottage-clustered valleys held the lilac last of night,

So, when dawn is in the skies, in a dream, a dream, I rise,
And I follow my lost boyhood to the heights of Paradise.
Life, thy dawn makes all things new! Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.

Moving through the dew, moving through the dew,
Floats a brother’s face to meet me! Is it you? Is it you?
For the night I leave behind keeps these dazzled eyes still blind!
But oh, the little hill-flowers, their scent is wise and kind;

And I shall not lose the way from the darkness to the day,
While dust can cling as their scent clings to memory for aye;
And the least link in the chain can recall the whole again,
And heaven at last resume its far-flung harvests, grain by grain.

To the hill-flowers clings my dust, and tho’ eyeless Death may thrust
All else into the darkness, in their heaven I put my trust;
And a dawn shall bid me climb to the little spread of thyme
Where first I heard the ripple of the fountain-heads of rhyme.

And a fir-wood that I know, from dawn to sunset-glow,
Shall whisper to a lonely sea, that swings far, far below.
Death, thy dawn makes all things new. Hills of Youth, I come to you,
Moving through the dew, moving through the dew.


Scheme aBbcc Bbdd eeff gghh xxbB Bbii xacx jjkk ddbB
Poetic Form
Metre 1 1010110101 111000101111111 0101111110111 101010101111101 1010110101 110111110111 1010111101101 0010111001111101 11111110010101 001010101110011 10101111010101 00111101111111 11101111010101 101110101111101 1011110010111 10101010101111 11110010010111 0110111101110 11111111111111 1010110101 1010110101 10101111111111 10111011110111 11010110111101 01111011010101 11111111110011 0011001110101 010110111110111 101101110110111 110101001101111 00111111010111 11110101010111 001111111111 11010101111101 11111111111111 1010110101
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 2,173
Words 411
Sentences 15
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 37
Letters per line (avg) 45
Words per line (avg) 11
Letters per stanza (avg) 185
Words per stanza (avg) 45
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:03 min read
70

Alfred Noyes

Alfred Noyes was an English poet best known for his ballads The Highwayman 1906 and The Barrel Organ more…

All Alfred Noyes poems | Alfred Noyes Books

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