Analysis of The Bells Of San Blas
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
What say the Bells of San Blas
To the ships that southward pass
From the harbor of Mazatlan?
To them it is nothing more
Than the sound of surf on the shore,--
Nothing more to master or man.
But to me, a dreamer of dreams,
To whom what is and what seems
Are often one and the same,--
The Bells of San Blas to me
Have a strange, wild melody,
And are something more than a name.
For bells are the voice of the church;
They have tones that touch and search
The hearts of young and old;
One sound to all, yet each
Lends a meaning to their speech,
And the meaning is manifold.
They are a voice of the Past,
Of an age that is fading fast,
Of a power austere and grand,
When the flag of Spain unfurled
Its folds o'er this western world,
And the Priest was lord of the land.
The chapel that once looked down
On the little seaport town
Has crumbled into the dust;
And on oaken beams below
The bells swing to and fro,
And are green with mould and rust.
'Is, then, the old faith dead,'
They say, 'and in its stead
Is some new faith proclaimed,
That we are forced to remain
Naked to sun and rain,
Unsheltered and ashamed?
'Once, in our tower aloof,
We rang over wall and roof
Our warnings and our complaints;
And round about us there
The white doves filled the air,
Like the white souls of the saints.
'The saints! Ah, have they grown
Forgetful of their own?
Are they asleep, or dead,
That open to the sky
Their ruined Missions lie,
No longer tenanted?
'Oh, bring us back once more
The vanished days of yore,
When the world with faith was filled;
Bring back the fervid zeal,
The hearts of fire and steel,
The hands that believe and build.
'Then from our tower again
We will send over land and main
Our voices of command,
Like exiled kings who return
To their thrones, and the people learn
That the Priest is lord of the land!'
O Bells of San Blas in vain
Ye call back the Past again;
The Past is deaf to your prayer!
Out of the shadows of night
The world rolls into light;
It is daybreak everywhere.
Scheme | XXABBA CCDEED FFGHHG IIJKKJ AALMML NNOAAO PPQRRQ AANSSG BBTUUT AAJAAJ AARVVR |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101111 1011101 101011 1111101 10111101 10111011 11101011 1111011 1101001 0111111 1011100 01101101 11101101 1111101 011101 111111 1010111 0010110 1101101 11111101 10100101 1011101 11101101 00111101 0101111 101011 1100101 011101 011101 0111101 110111 110011 111101 1111101 101101 1001 10101001 1110101 101001001 010111 011101 1011101 011111 010111 110111 110101 110101 1101 111111 010111 1011111 110101 0111001 0110101 11101001 11110101 1010101 111101 11100101 10111101 1111101 1110101 0111111 110111 011011 11110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,939 |
Words | 393 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 66 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 139 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 35 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 19, 2023
- 1:57 min read
- 95 Views
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"The Bells Of San Blas" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18819/the-bells-of-san-blas>.
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