Analysis of The Prisoner
Emily Jane Brontë 1818 (Thornton) – 1848 (Haworth)
Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
Year after year in gloom and desolate despair;
A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
And offers for short life, eternal liberty.
He comes with western winds, with evening's wandering airs,
With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars:
Winds take a pensive tone, and stars a tender fire,
And visions rise, and change, that kill me with desire.
Desire for nothing known in my maturer years,
When Joy grew mad with awe, at counting future tears:
When, if my spirit's sky was full of flashes warm,
I knew not whence they came, from sun or thunderstorm.
But first, a hush of peace -a soundless calm descends;
The struggle of distress and fierce impatience ends;
Mute music soothes my breast -unuttered harmony
That I could never dream, till Earth was lost to me.
Then dawns the Invisible; the Unseen its truth reveals;
My outward sense is gone, my inward essence feels;
Its wings are almost free -its home, its harbour found;
Measuring the gulf, it stoops, and dares the final bound.
O dreadful is the check -intense the agony -
When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see;
When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again,
The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.
Yet I would lose no sting, would wish no torture less;
The more that anguish racks, the earlier it will bless;
And robed in fires of hell, or bright with heavenly shine,
If it but herald Death, the vision is divine.
Scheme | AABB CXDD XCEE FFBB GGHH BBXX IIJJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (57%) |
Metre | 111101111111 110101010001 0100111100111 010111010100 1111011101001 1111110110101 1101010101010 0101011111010 01011010111 111111110101 111101111101 11111111110 11011101101 010101010101 1101111100 111101111111 11001000011101 110111110101 11111111101 1000111010101 110101010100 10101110010111 1010111011101 0111010011101 111111111101 0111010100111 01010111111001 111101010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,471 |
Words | 275 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 42 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 166 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 39 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 27, 2023
- 1:23 min read
- 383 Views
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