Analysis of Mist

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



ON the mountain side they fashion,
Those rifting shreds of storm,
A figure of strange passion,
A winged and sworded form.
Majestic, wild, colossal,
With angry arm thrown high;
Those swaying shoulders jostle
The glory from the sky.
Then flows the happy hour.
That tyrant of the mist
Turns to a wavering tower
And melts in amethyst,
Foretelling thus the cycle
— O speed it, Holy Dove!—
When the Archangel Michael
Shall vanish into Love.


Scheme ABABCDCDEFEFCGCG
Poetic Form
Metre 10101110 11111 0101110 01011 0101010 110111 1101010 010101 1101010 110101 11010010 010100 0101010 111101 101010 110011
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 431
Words 78
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 16
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 344
Words per stanza (avg) 75
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 20, 2023

23 sec read
113

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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