Analysis of The Slave Singing At Midnight
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Loud he sang the psalm of David!
He, a Negro and enslaved,
Sang of Israel's victory,
Sang of Zion, bright and free.
In that hour, when night is calmest,
Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,
In a voice so sweet and clear
That I could not choose but hear,
Songs of triumph, and ascriptions,
Such as reached the swart Egyptians,
When upon the Red Sea coast
Perished Pharaoh and his host.
And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strange emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad,
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.
Paul and Silas, in their prison,
Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen.
And an earthquake's arm of might
Broke their dungeon-gates at night.
But, alas! what holy angel
Brings the Slave this glad evangel?
And what earthquake's arm of might
Breaks his dungeon-gates at night?
Scheme | ABCCDAEFGGHHIIJJIIKKLLKK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101110 1010001 1110100 1110101 011011110 1110101 0011101 1111111 111001 11101010 1010111 1010011 00111010 11111010 1111101 1010101 10100110 11101010 011111 1110111 10111010 101111 011111 1110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 768 |
Words | 141 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 608 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 139 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 06, 2023
- 43 sec read
- 111 Views
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