Analysis of The Celebes

John Boyle O'Reilly 1844 (Dowth) – 1890 (Boston)



DEAR islands of the Orient,
Where Nature's first of love was spent;
Sweet hill-tops of the summered land
Where gods and men went hand in hand
In golden days of sinless earth!
Woe rack the womb of time, that bore
The primal evil to its birth!
It came; the gods were seen no more:
The fields made sacred by their feet,
The flowers they loved, grown all too sweet,
The streams their bright forms mirrored,
The fragrant banks that made their bed,
The human hearts round which they wove
Their threads of superhuman love—
These were too dear and desolate
To sink to fallen man's estate;
The gods who loved them loosed the seas,
Struck free the barriers of the deep,
That rolled in one careering sweep
And filled the land, as 'twere a grave,
And left no beauteous remnant, save
Those hill-tops called the Celebes.


Scheme AABBCDCDEEFGHIJKLMMNNL
Poetic Form
Metre 1101010 11011111 1111011 11011101 0101111 11011111 01010111 11010111 01110111 010111111 0111110 01011111 01011111 1110101 10110100 11110101 01111101 110100101 11010101 01011101 0111101 111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 816
Words 148
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 22
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 29
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 636
Words per stanza (avg) 146
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
112

John Boyle O'Reilly

John Boyle O'Reilly was an Irish-born poet, journalist and fiction writer. more…

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