Analysis of Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. Interlude II.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Soon as the story reached its end,
One, over eager to commend,
Crowned it with injudicious praise;
And then the voice of blame found vent,
And fanned the embers of dissent
Into a somewhat lively blaze.
The Theologian shook his head;
'These old Italian tales,' he said,
'From the much-praised Decameron down
Through all the rabble of the rest,
Are either trifling, dull, or lewd;
The gossip of a neighborhood
In some remote provincial town,
A scandalous chronicle at best!
They seem to me a stagnant fen,
Grown rank with rushes and with reeds,
Where a white lily, now and then,
Blooms in the midst of noxious weeds
And deadly nightshade on its banks.'
To this the Student straight replied,
'For the white lily, many thanks!
One should not say, with too much pride,
Fountain, I will not drink of thee!
Nor were it grateful to forget,
That from these reservoirs and tanks
Even imperial Shakespeare drew
His Moor of Venice, and the Jew,
And Romeo and Juliet,
And many a famous comedy.'
Then a long pause; till some one said,
'An Angel is flying overhead!'
At these words spake the Spanish Jew,
And murmured with an inward breath:
'God grant, if what you say be true,
It may not be the Angel of Death!'
And then another pause; and then,
Stroking his beard, he said again:
'This brings back to my memory
A story in the Talmud told,
That book of gems, that book of gold,
Of wonders many and manifold,
A tale that often comes to me,
And fills my heart, and haunts my brain,
And never wearies nor grows old.'
Scheme | AABCCB DDEFXXEFGHGHI JIJKLIMMLK DDMNMNGGKOOOKXO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010111 11010101 1110101 01011111 01010101 01011101 00100111 11010111 101111 11010101 11010111 0101010 01010101 010010011 11110101 11110011 10110101 10011101 0101111 11010101 10110101 11111111 10111111 10110101 1111001 10010011 11110001 010010 010010100 10111111 110110101 11110101 01011101 11111111 111101011 01010101 10111101 11111100 01000101 11111111 11010010 01110111 01110111 0101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,467 |
Words | 281 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 13, 10, 15 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 291 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 68 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:22 min read
- 137 Views
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"Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. Interlude II." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18742/tales-of-a-wayside-inn-%3A-part-1.-interlude-ii.>.
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