Analysis of Gone
Adam Lindsay Gordon 1833 – 1870
IN Collins Street standeth a statute tall,
A statue tall, on a pillar of stone,
Telling its story, to great and small,
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand waste lone;
Weary and wasted, and worn and wan,
Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
He lay on the desert a dying man;
Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go.
There are perils by land, and perils by water,
Short, I ween, are the obsequies
Of the landsman lost, but they may be shorter
With the mariner lost in the trackless seas;
And well for him, when the timbers start,
And the stout ship reels and settles below,
Who goes to his doom with as bold a heart,
As that dead man gone where we all must go.
Man is stubborn his rights to yield,
And redder than dews at eventide
Are the dews of battle, shed on the field,
By a nation’s wrath or a despot’s pride;
But few who have heard their death-knell roll,
From the cannon’s lips where they faced the foe,
Have fallen as stout and steady of soul,
As that dead man gone where we all must go.
Traverse yon spacious burial ground,
Many are sleeping soundly there,
Who pass’d with mourners standing around,
Kindred, and friends, and children fair;
Did he envy such ending? ’twere hard to say;
Had he cause to envy such ending? no;
Can the spirit feel for the senseless clay,
When it once has gone where we all must go?
What matters the sand or the whitening chalk,
The blighted herbage, the black’ning log,
The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?
That couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
Yet, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms’ food,
When once they’ve gone where we all must go.
With the pistol clenched in his failing hand,
With the death mist spread o’er his fading eyes,
He saw the sun go down on the sand,
And he slept, and never saw it rise;
’Twas well; he toil’d till his task was done,
Constant and calm in his latest throe,
The storm was weathered, the battle was won,
When he went, my friends, where we all must go.
God grant that whenever, soon or late,
Our course is run and our goal is reach’d,
We may meet our fate as steady and straight
As he whose bones in yon desert bleach’d;
No tears are needed—our cheeks are dry,
We have none to waste upon living woe;
Shall we sigh for one who has ceased to sigh,
Having gone, my friends, where we all must go?
We tarry yet, we are toiling still,
He is gone and he fares the best,
He fought against odds, he struggled up hill,
He has fairly earned his season of rest;
No tears are needed—fill our the wine,
Let the goblets clash, and the grape juice flow,
Ho! pledge me a death-drink, comrade mine,
To a brave man gone where we all must go.
Scheme | ababxcxc dedefcfC gfgxhchC ijijecxc xkxklclc memendnc ofofpcpc qrqrscsc |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010110101 011101011 101101101 1010110111 100100101 100101001 1110100101 1111111111 111011010110 111101 10101111110 1010010011 011110101 0011101001 1111111101 1111111111 11101111 0101111 1011101101 101011011 111111111 1010111101 1101101011 1111111111 101101001 10110101 111101001 10010101 11101101111 1111101101 1010110101 1111111111 11001101001 0101011 010110101 1011110101 11110111 1011010111 10100101111 111111111 1010101101 1011111101 110111101 011010111 111111111 100101101 0111001011 1111111111 111010111 10111010111 11110111001 111101101 1111010111 1111101101 1111111111 1011111111 110111101 11101101 1101111011 1110111011 1111011001 101100111 11101111 1011111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,927 |
Words | 516 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 64 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 258 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 64 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 10, 2023
- 2:34 min read
- 76 Views
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"Gone" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/160/gone>.
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