Analysis of Misgivings
Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
When ocean-clouds over inland hills
Sweep storming in late autumn brown,
And horror the sodden valley fills,
And the spire falls crashing in the town,
I muse upon my country's ills--
The tempest burning from the waste of Time
On the world's fairest hope linked with man's foulest crime.
Nature's dark side is heeded now--
(Ah! optimist-cheer dishartened flown)--
A child may read the moody brow
Of yon black mountain lone.
With shouts the torrents down the gorges go,
And storms are formed behind the storms we feel:
The hemlock shakes in the rafter, the oak in the driving keel.
Scheme | ABABACC DEDEXFF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011011 11001101 010010101 001110001 11011101 0101010111 10110111111 10111101 1100111 01110101 111101 1101010101 0111010111 01100100100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 587 |
Words | 102 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 7 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 228 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 50 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 31 sec read
- 95 Views
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"Misgivings" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/19087/misgivings>.
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