Analysis of Ultima Thule: Elegiac
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Dark is the morning with mist; in the narrow mouth of the harbor
Motionless lies the sea, under its curtain of cloud;
Dreamily glimmer the sails of ships on the distant horizon,
Like to the towers of a town, built on the verge of the sea.
Slowly and stately and still, they sail forth into the ocean;
With them sail my thoughts over the limitless deep,
Farther and farther away, borne on by unsatisfied longings,
Unto Hesperian isles, unto Ausonian shores.
Now they have vanished away, have disappeared in the ocean;
Sunk are the towers of the town into the depths of the sea!
All have vanished but those that, moored in the neighboring
roadstead,
Sailless at anchor ride, looming so large in the mist.
Vanished, too, are the thoughts, the dim, unsatisfied longings;
Sunk are the turrets of cloud into the ocean of dreams;
While in a haven of rest my heart is riding at anchor,
Held by the chains of love, held by the anchors of trust!
Scheme | ABCD CXEX CDXBX EXAX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101011001011010 1001011011011 11001111010010 110101011101101 100100111101010 111111001001 100100111101010 10111011 11110011010010 110101010101101 1110111100100 1 111011011001 1011010101010 11010110101011 100101111110110 1101111101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 930 |
Words | 171 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 5, 4 |
Lines Amount | 17 |
Letters per line (avg) | 43 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 185 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 170 Views
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"Ultima Thule: Elegiac" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18983/ultima-thule%3A-elegiac>.
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