Analysis of Song Of The New Year
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
I heard the bells at midnight
Ring in the dawning year;
And above the clanging chorus
Of the song, I seemed to hear
A choir of mystic voices
Flinging echoes, ringing clear,
From a band of angels winging
Through the haunted atmosphere:
'Ring out the shame and sorrow,
And the misery and sin,
That the dawning of the morrow
May in peace be ushered in.'
And I thought of all the trials
The departed years had cost,
And the blooming hopes and pleasures
That are withered now and lost;
And with joy I drank the music
Stealing o'er the feeling there
As the spirit song came pealing
On the silence everywhere:
'Ring out the shame and sorrow,
And the misery and sin,
That the dawning of the morrow
May in peace be ushered in.'
And I listened as a lover
To an utterance that flows
In syllables like dewdrops
From the red lips of a rose,
Till the anthem, fainter growing,
Climbing higher, chiming on
Up the rounds of happy rhyming,
Slowly vanished in the dawn:
'Ring out the shame and sorrow,
And the misery and sin,
That the dawning of the morrow
May in peace be ushered in.'
Then I raised my eyes to Heaven,
And with trembling lips I pled
For a blessing for the living
And a pardon for the dead;
And like a ghost of music
Slowly whispered--lowly sung--
Came the echo pure and holy
In the happy angel tongue:
'Ring out the shame and sorrow,
And the misery and sin,
And the dawn of every morrow
Will in peace be ushered in.'
Scheme | xabxxacaDEDE xxxxfgcgDEDE xhbhcxcxDEDE xicifjxjDEde |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111 100101 00101010 1011111 01011010 1010101 10111010 101010 1101010 0010001 10101010 1011100 01111010 0010111 00101010 1110101 01111010 10100101 1010111 101010 1101010 0010001 10101010 1011100 01101010 1110011 010011 1011101 10101010 101011 10111010 1010001 1101010 0010001 10101010 1011100 11111110 01100111 10101010 0010101 0101110 1010101 10101010 0010101 1101010 0010001 001110010 1011100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,375 |
Words | 273 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 12, 12, 12 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 277 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 67 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 52 Views
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"Song Of The New Year" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/21027/song-of-the-new-year>.
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