Analysis of The Mirror Of Diana
Mathilde Blind 1841 (Mannheim) – 1896 (London)
Popular Name for Lake Nemi.
SHE floats into the quiet skies,
Where, in the circle of hills,
Her immemorial mirror fills
With light, as of a Virgin's eyes
When, love a-tremble in their blue,
They glow twin violets dipped in dew.
Mild as a metaphor of Sleep,
Immaculately maiden-white,
The Queen Moon of ancestral night
Beholds her image in the deep:
As if a-gaze she beams above
Lake Nemi's magic glass of love.
White rose, white lily of the vale,
Perfume the even breath of night;
In many a burst of sweet delight
The love throb of the nightingale
Swells through lush flowering woods and fills
The circle of the listening hills.
White rose, white lily of the skies,
The Moon-flower blossoms in the lake;
The nightingale for her fair sake
With hopeless love's impassioned cries
Seems fain to sing till song must kill
Himself with one tumultuous trill.
And all the songs and all the scents,
The light of glowworms and the fires
Of fire-flies in the cypress spires;
And all the wild wind instruments
Of pine and ilex as the breeze
Sweeps out their mystic harmonies;--
All are but Messengers of May
To that white orb of maiden fire
Who fills the moth with mad desire
To die enamoured in her ray,
And turns each dewdrop in the grass
Into a fairy looking-glass.
O Beauty, far and far above
The night moth and the nightingale!
Far, far above life's narrow pale,
O Unattainable! O Love!
Even as the nightingale we cry
For some Ideal set on high.
Haunting the deep reflective mind,
You may surprise its perfect Sphere
Glassed like the Moon within her mere,
Who at a puff of alien wind
Melts in innumerable rings,
Elusive in the flux of things.
Scheme | A BCCBDD EFFEGG HFFHCC BIIBJJ XXXXKK ALLXMM GHHGNN OPPOQQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1001111 11010101 1001011 00100101 11110101 11010011 111100101 11010011 01000101 01110101 1010001 11011101 1110111 11110101 01010111 010011101 01110100 111100101 010101001 11110101 011010001 01001011 11010101 11111111 01111001 01010101 01110010 110100101 01011100 1101101 11110100 11110011 111111010 110111010 111001 0111001 01010101 11010101 01100100 11011101 1010011 101010011 1101111 10010101 11011011 11010101 110111001 10010001 01000111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,641 |
Words | 297 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 49 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 144 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 37 Views
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"The Mirror Of Diana" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/27083/the-mirror-of-diana>.
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