Analysis of The Red Flower
Henry Van Dyke 1852 (Germantown, Pennsylvania) – 1933 (Princeton, New Jersey)
In the pleasant time of Pentecost,
By the little river Kyll,
I followed the angler's winding path
Or waded the stream at will,
And the friendly fertile German land
Lay round me green and still.
But all day long on the eastern bank
Of the river cool and clear,
Where the curving track of the double rails
Was hardly seen though near,
The endless trains of German troops
Went rolling down to Trier.
They packed the windows with bullet heads
And caps of hodden gray;
They laughed and sang and shouted loud
When the trains were brought to a stay;
They waved their hands and sang again
As they went on their iron way.
No shadow fell on the smiling land,
No cloud arose in the sky;
I could hear the river's quiet tune
When the trains had rattled by;
But my heart sank low with a heavy sense
Of trouble,--I knew not why.
Then came I into a certain field
Where the devil's paint-brush spread
'Mid the gray and green of the rolling hills
A flaring splotch of red,--
An evil omen, a bloody sign,
And a token of many dead.
I saw in a vision the field-gray horde
Break forth at the devil's hour,
And trample the earth into crimson mud
In the rage of the Will to Power,--
All this I dreamed in the valley of Kyll,
At the sign of the blood-red flower.
Scheme | XAXABA XCXCXD XEXEXE BFXFXF XGXGXG XDXDAD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 00101110 1010101 11001101 1100111 001010101 111101 111110101 1010101 1010110101 110111 01011101 1101110 110101101 01111 11010101 10101101 11110101 11111101 11110101 1101001 111010101 1011101 1111110101 1101111 111010101 1010111 1010110101 010111 110100101 00101101 1100100111 11101010 0100101101 001101110 1111001011 101101110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,215 |
Words | 242 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 161 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 112 Views
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"The Red Flower" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18390/the-red-flower>.
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