Analysis of For I Must Sing of All I Feel and Know
James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)
For I must sing of all I feel and know,
Waiting with Memnon passive near the palms,
Until the heavenly light doth dawn and grow
And thrill my silence into mystic psalms;
From unknown realms the wind streams sad or gay,
The trees give voice responsive to its sway.
For I must sing: of mountains, deserts, seas,
Of rivers ever flowing, ever flowing;
Of beasts and birds, of grass and flowers and trees
Forever fading and forever growing;
Of calm and storm, of night and eve and noon,
Of boundless space, and sun and stars and moon;
And of the secret sympathies that bind
All beings to their wondrous dwelling-place;
And of the perfect Unity enshrined
In omnipresence throughout time and space,
Alike informing with its full control
The dust, the stars, the worm, the human soul;
And most supremely of my human kin --
Their thoughts and deeds, their valors and their fears,
Their griefs and joys, their virtue and their sin,
Their feasts and wars, their cradles and their biers,
Their temples, prisons, homes and ships and marts,
The subtlest windings of their brains and hearts.
So rich and sweet is Life. And what is Death? --
The tranquil slumbers dear and strange and boon
That feed at whiles our waking being's breath;
The solemn midnight of this glorious noon,
With countless distant stars, and each a sun,
Revealed harmonious with our daily one.
Scheme | AXAXBB CDCDEE FGFGHH IXIXJJ KEKELL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1111111101 101110101 01010011101 0111001101 1011011111 0111010111 1111110101 11010101010 11011101001 01010001010 1101110101 1101010101 0101010011 1101110101 0100110001 001001101 0101011101 0101010101 01010011101 110111011 1101110011 1101110011 1101010101 01111101 1101110111 010110101 11111010101 0101111001 1101010101 010100110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,357 |
Words | 238 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 214 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 47 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 105 Views
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"For I Must Sing of All I Feel and Know" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20654/for-i-must-sing-of-all-i-feel-and-know>.
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