Analysis of The Two Coffins
Eugene Field 1850 (St. Louis) – 1895 (Chicago)
In yonder old cathedral
Two lovely coffins lie;
In one, the head of the state lies dead,
And a singer sleeps hard by.
Once had that King great power
And proudly ruled the land--
His crown e'en now is on his brow
And his sword is in his hand.
How sweetly sleeps the singer
With calmly folded eyes,
And on the breast of the bard at rest
The harp that he sounded lies.
The castle walls are falling
And war distracts the land,
But the sword leaps not from that mildewed spot
There in that dead king's hand.
But with every grace of nature
There seems to float along--
To cheer again the hearts of men
The singer's deathless song.
Scheme | XAXA BCXC BDXD XCXC BEXE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 0101010 110101 010110111 0010111 1111110 010101 111111111 0111011 1101010 110101 010110111 0111101 0101110 010101 101111111 101111 111001110 111101 11010111 01011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 613 |
Words | 122 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 98 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 37 sec read
- 48 Views
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"The Two Coffins" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/13105/the-two-coffins>.
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