Analysis of Premonition
George Santayana 1863 (Madrid) – 1952 (Rome)
The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.
A hidden light illumines all our seeing,
An unknown love enchants our solitude.
We feel and know that from the depths of being
Exhales an infinite, a perfect good.
Though the heart wear the garment of its sorrow
And be not happy like a naked star,
Yet from the thought of peace some peace we borrow,
Some rapture from the rapture felt afar.
Our heart strings are too coarse for Nature's fingers
Deftly to quicken as she pulses on,
And the harsh tremor that among them lingers
Will into sweeter silence die anon.
We catch the broken prelude and suggestion
Of things unuttered, needing to be sung;
We know the burden of them, and their question
Lies heavy on the heart, nor finds a tongue.
Till haply, lightning through the storm of ages,
Our sullen secret flash from sky to sky,
Glowing in some diviner poet's pages
And swelling into rapture from this sigh.
Scheme | ABAB CXCX DEDE FGFG HIHI JKJK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (83%) |
Metre | 0101001101 1111010101 1101010101 1101010111 0101111010 101111010 11011101110 111000011 10110101110 0111010101 1101111111 1101010101 101111111010 1011011101 00110101110 101101011 1101010010 11110111 11010110110 1101011101 1110101110 10101011111 100111010 0100110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,026 |
Words | 186 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 136 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 98 Views
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"Premonition" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/15794/premonition>.
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