Analysis of The Waterfall
Henry Kendall 1839 (Australia) – 1882 (Sydney)
THE SONG of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.
The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!
I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.
Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?
. . . . .
And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:—
“Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks,” saith the water,
“With the moss on their feet?
“Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers—
The golden and purple—
Of honey-sweet bowers,
“Mine eyes have been blinded
Because of the sun;
And moaning and moaning
I listlessly run.
“These hills are so flinty!—
Ah! tell me, dark Earth,
What valley leads back to
The place of my birth?—
“What valley leads up to
The haunts where a child
Of the caverns I sported,
The free and the wild?
“There lift me,”—it crieth,
“I faint from the heat;
With a sob for the shadows
So cool and so sweet.”
Ye rocks, that look over
With never a tear,
I yearn for one half of
The wasted love here!
My sister so wistful,
You know I believe,
Like a child for the mountains
This water doth grieve.
Ah! you with the blue eyes
And golden-brown hair,
Come closer and closer
And truly declare:—
Supposing a darling
Once happened to sin,
In a passionate space,
Would you carry her in—
If your fathers and mothers,
The grand and the gray,
Had taken the weak one
And hurled her away?
Scheme | abxb cDad xexe afgf axgx hIai xjkj lcmc gnon oplp nihI aqxx krxr xqaq mfxf jDcd |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (25%) |
Metre | 011010 11011 01001 01111 011010 01001 110110 01101 11011 01111 010011 11001 111010 11001 1111110 10101 1 010110 11101 01011 01001 11101 11011 0011010 101111 11111 010010 010010 110110 111110 01101 010010 11001 111110 11111 110111 01111 110111 01101 1010110 01001 11111 11101 101101 11011 111110 11001 111111 01011 110110 11101 1011010 11011 111011 01011 110010 01001 010010 11011 001001 111000 1110010 01001 110011 01001 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,515 |
Words | 300 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 15 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 9, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 65 |
Letters per line (avg) | 18 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 78 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 20 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 111 Views
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"The Waterfall" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17603/the-waterfall>.
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