Analysis of The Bird And The Ship. (From The German Of Müller)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
'The rivers rush into the sea,
By castle and town they go;
The winds behind them merrily
Their noisy trumpets blow.
'The clouds are passing far and high,
We little birds in them play;
And everything, that can sing and fly,
Goes with us, and far away.
'I greet thee, bonny boat! Whither, or whence,
With thy fluttering golden band?'--
'I greet thee, little bird! To the wide sea
I haste from the narrow land.
'Full and swollen is every sail;
I see no longer a hill,
I have trusted all to the sounding gale,
And it will not let me stand still.
'And wilt thou, little bird, go with us?
Thou mayest stand on the mainmast tall,
For full to sinking is my house
With merry companions all.'--
'I need not and seek not company,
Bonny boat, I can sing all alone;
For the mainmast tall too heavy am I,
Bonny boat, I have wings of my own.
'High over the sails, high over the mast,
Who shall gainsay these joys?
When thy merry companions are still, at last,
Thou shalt hear the sound of my voice.
'Who neither may rest, nor listen may,
God bless them every one!
I dart away, in the bright blue day,
And the golden fields of the sun.
'Thus do I sing my merry song,
Wherever the four winds blow;
And this same song, my whole life long,
Neither Poet nor Printer may know.'
Scheme | ABAB CDCD XEAE FGFG XHXH AICI JXJX DKDK LBLB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (89%) |
Metre | 01010101 1100111 01011100 110101 01110101 1101011 01011101 1110101 1111011011 11100101 1111011011 1110101 101011001 1111001 1110110101 01111111 011101111 1111011 11110111 1100101 111011100 101111101 101111011 101111111 1100111001 11111 11100101111 11101111 110111101 1111001 110100111 00101101 11111101 0100111 01111111 101011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,264 |
Words | 246 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 106 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 76 Views
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