Analysis of Lydd
Katharine Lee Bates 1859 (Falmouth) – 1929 (Wellesley)
For the Reunion of the Bates Family at Quincy, August 3, 1916
FAR away on the sunny levels
Where Kent lies drowsing beside the sea,
Where over the foxglove as over the foam
The gray gull sails, is our ancient home.
Wide though we wander, something follows,
The cradle-call from a village hid
Under the cloud of rooks and swallows
That love its thatches and orchards, Lydd.
Here they sported in rustic revels,
Our sturdy forbears, while ale flowed free,
Richard and Susan and Sybil and John,
All their jollity hushed and gone;
Our grandsires proud of their scraps of Latin,
Our grandams, 'notable huswifs' all;
We may touch the very settles they sat in,
But they, like their shadows upon the wall,
Have slipped from their sweet, accustomed places,
Stephen, Samuel, Ellen, Anne.
The pewter flagons they valued so
Stand, though battered, in shining row,
But the hands that scoured them, long since folded,
Lips that smacked over them, long since dust,
Are known no more in the town they molded
To civic honor and neighbor trust.
Ah, for their quaint, forgotten graces,
Flushing raptures of maid and man,
James and Alice, Thomas and Joan,
Blood of our blood and bone of our bone!
Only the trampled slabs and brasses
That floor the aisles of the old church tell
Their dates and virtues to him who passes,
How long they labored in Lydd, how well.
Their Catholic sins have all been shriven,
And their Puritan righteousness pardoned, too.
Lax and merry, or holy and harsh,
They have flown to Heaven from Romney Marsh,
Lydia, David, Joshua, Zealous,
'Katharine Spinster,' yet still on earth
Their wraiths abide in our being, jealous
For the brief, blunt name and its modest worth.
For each of us is phantom-driven,
A haunted house where a glimmering crew
Of dear and queer ancestral ghosts
Quarrel and match their family boasts,
Color our half and fashion our noses,
Shape the deed and govern the mood;
In every rose are a thousand roses;
Every man is a multitude.
A patchwork we are of antique vagaries;
Primitive passions trouble our pulse.
'Margery, relict of Andrew Bate,'
Clement, Rachel and William hate
And adore in us. No vain sunriser
In all our clan, but he owes the praise
To some progenital dew-surpriser
Who knelt to the dawn in pagan days.
Sailors that steered for the misty Canaries,
Fishers whose feet loved the feel of the dulse,
Agnes, Simon, Julian, George,
Faithful in kitchen, hayfield and forge,
Give us our dreams, our sea-love, the voices
That speak in our conscience, rebuke and forbid.
Hark! In our festal laughter rejoices
A quavering note from the graves of Lydd.
Scheme | ABCDDEFEABCGHIJKJLMNNOAOAPMQQPRLRGSTTUVUVISWWPXPXYZ1 1 2 3 2 3 YB4 4 LFBA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1001010110011010 101101010 11110101 1100111001 0111110101 111101010 010110101 100111010 111100101 111001010 101011111 1001001001 111101 1011111110 10110011 11101010110 111110101 1111101010 1010101 01011101 11100101 10111011110 111101111 1111001110 110100101 111101010 1011101 10101001 11101011101 100101010 110110111 1101011110 111100111 11011111 01100100101 101011001 1111101101 1001010010 10101111 11010101010 1011101101 111111010 0101101001 11010101 100111001 101010101010 10101001 01001101010 10011010 0111101100 1001010101 10011101 10100101 00101111 0110111101 11111 111010101 10111010010 1011101101 10101001 10010101 111011011010 110101001001 10101101 0100110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,526 |
Words | 451 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 65 |
Lines Amount | 65 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 2,040 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 447 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:14 min read
- 66 Views
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"Lydd" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/24870/lydd>.
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