Analysis of At Stonehenge

Katharine Lee Bates 1859 (Falmouth) – 1929 (Wellesley)



Grim stones whose gray lips keep your secret well,
Our hands that touch you touch an ancient terror,
An ancient woe, colossal citadel
Of some fierce faith, some heaven-affronting error.
Rude-built, as if young Titans on this wold
Once played with ponderous blocks a striding giant
Had brought from oversea, till child more bold
Tumbled their temple down with foot defiant.
Upon your fatal altar Redbreast combs
A fluttering plume, and flocks of eager swallows
Dip fearlessly to choose their April homes
Amid your crevices and storm-beat hollows.
Even so in elemental mysteries,
Portentous, vast, august, uncomprehended,
Do we dispose our little lives for ease,
By their unconscious courtesies befriended.


Scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGCGH
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111101 101111111010 110101010 111111001010 1111110111 111100101010 111011111 10110111010 011101011 010010111010 11111101 01110001110 1010010100 0101101 11011010111 1110100010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 697
Words 112
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 16
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 36
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 575
Words per stanza (avg) 110
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

33 sec read
88

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful Bates was born in Falmouth Massachusetts and lived as an adult on Centre Street in Newton Massachusetts An historic plaque marks the site of her home The daughter of a Congregational pastor she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley While teaching there she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Comans death in 1915 It is debated if this relationship was an intimate lesbian relationship as different sources maintain or a platonic relationship called sometimes Boston marriages as the local historical society of her birthplace maintain more…

All Katharine Lee Bates poems | Katharine Lee Bates Books

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