Analysis of The Fiftieth Birthday Of Agassiz. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
It was fifty years ago
In the pleasant month of May,
In the beautiful Pays de Vaud,
A child in its cradle lay.
And Nature, the old nurse, took
The child upon her knee,
Saying: 'Here is a story-book
Thy Father has written for thee.'
'Come, wander with me,' she said,
'Into regions yet untrod;
And read what is still unread
In the manuscripts of God.'
And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.
And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale.
So she keeps him still a child,
And will not let him go,
Though at times his heart beats wild
For the beautiful Pays de Vaud;
Though at times he hears in his dreams
The Ranz des Vaches of old,
And the rush of mountain streams
From glaciers clear and cold;
And the mother at home says, 'Hark!
For his voice I listen and yearn;
It is growing late and dark,
And my boy does not return!'
Scheme | ABCB DEDE CCCC BFBF GHGH CACC ICIC JKJK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (88%) |
Metre | 1110101 0010111 00100111 0101101 0100111 010101 10110101 11011011 1101111 011011 0111101 001011 011001001 1100111 1111101 011010 00100111 1110111 111011001 110111 1111101 011111 1111111 10100111 11111011 011111 0011101 110101 00101111 11111001 1110101 0111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 970 |
Words | 198 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 95 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 58 sec read
- 103 Views
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"The Fiftieth Birthday Of Agassiz. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18853/the-fiftieth-birthday-of-agassiz.-%28birds-of-passage.-flight-the-first%29>.
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