Analysis of The Song Of Empedocles

Matthew Arnold 1822 (Laleham) – 1888 (Liverpool)



And you, ye stars,
Who slowly begin to marshal,
As of old, in the fields of heaven,
Your distant, melancholy lines!
Have you, too, survived yourselves?
Are you, too, what I fear to become?
You, too, once lived;
You too moved joyfully
Among august companions,
In an older world, peopled by Gods,
In a mightier order,
The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.
But now, ye kindle
Your lonely, cold-shining lights,
Unwilling lingerers
In the heavenly wilderness,
For a younger, ignoble world;
And renew, by necessity,
Night after night your courses,
In echoing, unneared silence,
Above a race you know not—
Uncaring and undelighted,
Without friend and without home;
Weary like us, though not
Weary with our weariness.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKCBLAMNHOPQGRQM
Poetic Form Tetractys  (24%)
Metre 0111 11001110 111001110 1101001 1110101 111111101 1111 111100 0110010 011011011 0010010 010001001001110 11110 1101101 0101 00100100 10100101 00110100 1101110 0100110 0101111 01001 0110011 101111 10110100
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 709
Words 120
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 25
Lines Amount 25
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 566
Words per stanza (avg) 118
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

36 sec read
68

Matthew Arnold

Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. more…

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