Analysis of The Adieu



We part, and thou art mine no more!
I go through seas never sought before,
Where stars unknown to our native skies
Startle the mariner's watchful eyes.
Our bark shall over the waters sweep,
And rouse the children of the deep:
Around us, 'midst the silvery spray,
With glittering scales shall the dolphins play.
When scarcely flutters the snowy sail,
Gently waved by the whispering gale,
I shall gaze in the ocean's liquid glass,
And mark the hidden treasures we pass:
The amber and coral groves that glow
In the sparkling sunbeams that dart below,
Whose lucid and spreading boughs between
Countless flitting forms are seen.
Oh! could I beneath the billows dive,
And in that world of splendour live!
Were there a cave for thee and me
Beneath that bright and silent sea,
Which waves conceal and rocks surround,
Like that the Island loves found*.
Strange and solemn was the hour
That saw them reach that secret bower;—
Some love-lorn seamaid's deep abode,
Or palace of the ocean god.
Long had Hoonga's inmost cells
  Echoed to the mournful tone
Of the waves among the shells,
  And the winds that feebly moan:
But never to music so sad, so sweet,
As the vows they breathed in that lone retreat.
But, ah! our bark glides swiftly on,
And my vision of that cave is gone,


Scheme AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJKKLLMNOPOPQQRS
Poetic Form
Metre 11011111 111110101 1101110101 1001101 1011100101 01010101 011101001 1100110101 110100101 101101001 1110010101 010101011 010010111 001011101 110010101 1010111 111010101 0011111 01011101 01110101 11010101 1101011 10101010 111111010 1111101 11010101 11111 1010101 1010101 0011101 1101101111 1011101101 111011101 011011111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,241
Words 227
Sentences 11
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 34
Lines Amount 34
Letters per line (avg) 29
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 996
Words per stanza (avg) 224
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:09 min read
111

Louisa Stuart Costello

Louisa Stuart Costello was a writer on travel and French history. Costello was born in Ireland or Sussex. She resided in Paris, France, near the Seine River. She had no true home, but wandered place to place staying with friends and acquaintances. With her brother Dudley Costello, also a well known for his travel writing, they promoted the copying of illuminated manuscript. She wrote over 100 texts, articles, poems, songs and knew such people as Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Thomas Moore. She was a poet, historian, journalist, painter and novelist. Her father was Colonel James Francis Costello, who died in April 1814 while fighting Napoleon. Costello published Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen, which included her illustrations, and several other popular works of poetry and travel. Her collection Songs of a Stranger was dedicated to William Lisle Bowles. She did not return to France until after her mother sent for her in 1815/18 and then lived chiefly in Paris, where she was a miniature-painter. In 1815 she published The Maid of the Cyprus Isle, etc. She also wrote books of travel, which were very popular, as were her novels, chiefly founded on French history. Another work, published in 1835, is Specimens of the Early Poetry of France. She died in Boulogne sur Mer, France of mouth cancer. more…

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