Analysis of By The Fireside : King Witlaf's Drinking-horn
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Witlaf, a king of the Saxons,
Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed,--
That, whenever they sat at their revels,
And drank from the golden bowl,
They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass;
In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached his holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,
And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more.
And the reader droned from the pulpit
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac,
And Saint Basil's homilies;
Till the great bells of the convent,
From their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomaeus,
Proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet still in his pallid fingers
He clutched the golden bowl,
In which, like a pearl dissolving,
Had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
The jovial monks forbore,
For they cried, 'Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!'
Scheme | ABBX CDED XFXF XXCG HIJI XKLK XEAE JMGM HDLD CEXI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (80%) Etheree (35%) Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1011010 111111 1010111 110101 1010111110 0110101 11010010 0101111 1111110 010101 01101110 111001 1110111 111101 011101010 1111101 11101010 1010111 011101110 1010111 001011010 10101101 0101111 011100 10111010 11100010 101 010110 001110010 0010111 0011010 10101101 11011010 110101 01101010 1100111 1111110 010011 11111010 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,288 |
Words | 241 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 103 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 116 Views
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"By The Fireside : King Witlaf's Drinking-horn" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18524/by-the-fireside-%3A-king-witlaf%27s-drinking-horn>.
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