Analysis of The Aeolian Harp
Herman Melville 1819 – 1891
_At The Surf Inn_
List the harp in window wailing
Stirred by fitful gales from sea:
Shrieking up in mad crescendo--
Dying down in plaintive key!
Listen: less a strain ideal
Than Ariel's rendering of the Real.
What that Real is, let hint
A picture stamped in memory's mint.
Braced well up, with beams aslant,
Betwixt the continents sails the _Phocion,_
For Baltimore bound from Alicant.
Blue breezy skies white fleeces fleck
Over the chill blue white-capped ocean:
From yard-arm comes--'Wreck ho, a
wreck!'
Dismasted and adrift,
Longtime a thing forsaken;
Overwashed by every wave
Like the slumbering kraken;
Heedless if the billow roar,
Oblivious of the lull,
Leagues and leagues from shoal or shore,
It swims--a levelled hull:
Bulwarks gone--a shaven wreck,
Nameless and a grass-green deck.
A lumberman: perchance, in hold
Prostrate pines with hemlocks rolled.
It has drifted, waterlogged,
Till by trailing weeds beclogged:
Drifted, drifted, day by day,
Pilotless on pathless way.
It has drifted till each plank
Is oozy as the oyster-bank:
Drifted, drifted, night by night,
Craft that never shows a light;
Nor ever, to prevent worse knell,
Tolls in fog the warning bell.
From collision never shrinking,
Drive what may through darksome smother;
Saturate, but never sinking,
Fatal only to the _other!_
Deadlier than the sunken reef
Since still the snare it shifteth,
Torpid in dumb ambuscade
Waylayingly it drifteth.
O, the sailors--O, the sails!
O, the lost crews never heard of!
Well the harp of Ariel wails
Thought that tongue can tell no word of!
Scheme | A BCDC EEFF DADGAXG XAXAHIHIGGJJ XDKKLLMMNN BXBHXODO PQPQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (38%) |
Metre | 1011 10101010 1110111 10101010 1010101 1010101 11100101 111111 0101011 111111 010100101 110111 11011101 100111110 1111110 1 1001 101010 111001 101001 110101 0100101 1011111 110101 110101 1000111 01000101 101111 111010 111011 1010111 100111 1110111 1110101 1010111 1110101 11010111 1010101 10101010 1111110 1011010 1010101 10010101 110111 10011 111 1010101 10111011 10111001 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,508 |
Words | 258 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 4, 4, 7, 12, 10, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 50 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 153 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 77 Views
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"The Aeolian Harp" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/19103/the-aeolian-harp>.
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