Analysis of At Sea
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
O we go down to sea in ships--
But Hope remains behind,
And Love, with laughter on his lips,
And Peace, of passive mind;
While out across the deeps of night,
With lifted sails of prayer,
We voyage off in quest of light,
Nor find it anywhere.
O Thou who wroughtest earth and sea,
Yet keepest from our eyes
The shores of an eternity
In calms of Paradise,
Blow back upon our foolish quest
With all the driving rain
Of blinding tears and wild unrest,
And waft us home again.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EXEXFXFX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111101 110101 01110111 011101 11010111 110111 11010111 11110 1111101 111101 01110100 01110 110110101 110101 11010101 011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 463 |
Words | 92 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 183 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 13, 2023
- 27 sec read
- 495 Views
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"At Sea" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20833/at-sea>.
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