Analysis of Golden--of the selkirks
Emily Pauline Johnson 1861 – 1913
A trail upwinds from Golden;
It leads to a land God only knows,
To the land of eternal frozen snows,
That trail unknown and olden.
And they tell a tale that is strange and wild--
Of a lovely and lonely mountain child
That went up the trail from Golden.
A child in the sweet of her womanhood,
Beautiful, tender, grave and good
As the saints in time long olden.
And the days count not, nor the weeks avail;
For the child that went up the mountain trail
Came never again to Golden.
And the watchers wept in the midnight gloom,
Where the canyons yawn and the Selkirks loom,
For the love that they knew of olden.
And April dawned, with its suns aflame,
And the eagles wheeled and the vultures came
And poised o'er the town of Golden.
God of the white eternal peaks,
Guard the dead while the vulture seeks!--
God of the days so olden.
For only God in His greatness knows
Where the mountain holly above her grows,
On the trail that leads from Golden.
Scheme | ABBA CCA DDA EEA FFA GGA HHA BBA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 011110 111011101 1011010101 1101010 0110111101 1010010101 11101110 010011010 10010101 10101110 0011110101 1011110101 11001110 001010011 101010011 101111110 010111101 0010100101 011001110 11010101 10110101 1101110 110101101 1010100101 10111110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 951 |
Words | 181 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
Lines Amount | 25 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 92 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 54 sec read
- 61 Views
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"Golden--of the selkirks" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/12584/golden--of-the-selkirks>.
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