Analysis of Silence
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
Thousands of thousands of hushed years ago,
Out on the edge of Chaos, all alone
I stood on peaks of vapor, high upthrown
Above a sea that knew nor ebb nor flow,
Nor any motion won of winds that blow,
Nor any sound of watery wail or moan,
Nor lisp of wave, nor wandering undertone
Of any tide lost in the night below.
So still it was, I mind me, as I laid
My thirsty ear against mine own faint sigh
To drink of that, I sipped it, half afraid
'Twas but the ghost of a dead voice spilled by
The one starved star that tottered through the shade
And came tiptoeing toward me down the sky.
Scheme | ABBAABBACDCDCD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011011101 1101110101 111111011 0101111111 1101011111 11011100111 1111110010 1101100101 1111111111 1101011111 1111111101 1101101111 011111101 0110011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 578 |
Words | 119 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 14 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 453 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 117 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 07, 2023
- 35 sec read
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"Silence" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/21020/silence>.
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