Analysis of The Well of Night, Part 1
A breath I saw of foulest night congealed,
That stayed when dawn the blessed sun revealed,
A deep unbounded black, by aught unlit,
With strange malign awareness marked in it.
From distant lands and eons past it came,
Why then this gripping fear it knows my name?
And as I watched it called my name.
Though dreams revealed, no dream it was, this thing,
Not made by man, but sought by priest and king.
A globe it seemed of blackest polished stone,
A tall man’s height, and shaped by hands unknown,
That, when awakened by unholy rite,
Became an unplumbed pit of darkest night,
A window to eternal night.
I saw it first upon a hill that stood
Above thick mists, still pools, and rotted wood.
Beneath the moon did nightmare figures come
To worship what was hidden from the sun,
A race from elder myths whose world would end
A million years before the age of men,
Forgotten by the race of men.
For wisdom and for power did they come,
And seek to bargain with the shadowed one,
And so it was that many of their own,
Not on, or in, but through the thing were thrown,
To dwindle in that vast and empty night,
Until the one that moved beyond their sight
Approached, and took them from their sight.
Then came a night without a lighted moon,
With stars obscured and landscape lost in gloom,
Then lamps and torches did they bring for light,
To gird their sacrifice and evil rite,
Until a strangely chill and fetid blast,
Blew out the flames, and brought the dark at last,
And brought unchallenged night at last.
The nameless stirred, and then unseen it came,
And through the thing it reached, their souls to claim,
Unearthly sounds escaped the b‘leaguered hill
But nothing more, and soon the night grew still,
And when the light of day returned, the door
Was shut, the hid’ous worshipers no more,
And no one came there evermore.
Scheme | AAAXBBB CCDDEEE FFGHXII GHDDEEE XXEEJJJ BBKKLLL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011111101 111101101 010101111 1101010101 1101010111 1111011111 01111111 1101111111 1111111101 0111110101 0111011101 1101010101 011111101 01010101 1111010111 0111110101 010111101 1101110101 0111011111 0101010111 01010111 1100110111 0111010101 0111110111 1110110101 1100110101 0101110111 01011111 1101010101 110101101 1101011111 111100101 0101010101 1101010111 01010111 0101010111 0101111111 010101011 1101010111 0101110101 110110011 0111110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,857 |
Words | 372 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 238 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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"The Well of Night, Part 1" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/173188/the-well-of-night%2C-part-1>.
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