Analysis of Vittoria Colonna
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Once more, once more, Inarimé,
I see thy purple hills!--once more
I hear the billows of the bay
Wash the white pebbles on thy shore.
High o'er the sea-surge and the sands,
Like a great galleon wrecked and cast
Ashore by storms, thy castle stands,
A mouldering landmark of the Past.
Upon its terrace-walk I see
A phantom gliding to and fro;
It is Colonna,--it is she
Who lived and loved so long ago.
Pescara's beautiful young wife,
The type of perfect womanhood,
Whose life was love, the life of life,
That time and change and death withstood.
For death, that breaks the marriage band
In others, only closer pressed
The wedding-ring upon her hand
And closer locked and barred her breast.
She knew the life-long martyrdom,
The weariness, the endless pain
Of waiting for some one to come
Who nevermore would come again.
The shadows of the chestnut trees,
The odor of the orange blooms,
The song of birds, and, more than these,
The silence of deserted rooms;
The respiration of the sea,
The soft caresses of the air,
All things in nature seemed to be
But ministers of her despair;
Till the o'erburdened heart, so long
Imprisoned in itself, found vent
And voice in one impassioned song
Of inconsolable lament.
Then as the sun, though hidden from sight,
Transmutes to gold the leaden mist,
Her life was interfused with light,
From realms that, though unseen, exist,
Inarimé! Inarimé!
Thy castle on the crags above
In dust shall crumble and decay,
But not the memory of her love.
Scheme | ABCB DEDE FGFG HIHI JKJK AXAX LMLM FNFN OPOP QRQR ASCS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (91%) |
Metre | 11111 11110111 11010101 10110111 110011001 101100101 01111101 011101 01110111 01010101 11010111 11011101 110011 0110110 11110111 11010101 11110101 01010101 01010101 01010101 11011100 01000101 11011111 1101101 011011 01010101 01110111 01010101 0010101 01010101 11010111 11001001 101111 01000111 01010101 1101 110111011 1110101 011111 11110101 11 11010101 01110001 110100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,450 |
Words | 263 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 105 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:19 min read
- 152 Views
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"Vittoria Colonna" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18999/vittoria-colonna>.
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