Analysis of Arethusa
I.
Arethusa arose
From her couch of snows
In the Acroceraunian mountains,--
From cloud and from crag,
With many a jag,
Shepherding her bright fountains.
She leapt down the rocks,
With her rainbow locks
Streaming among the streams;--
Her steps paved with green
The downward ravine
Which slopes to the western gleams;
And gliding and springing
She went, ever singing,
In murmurs as soft as sleep;
The Earth seemed to love her,
And Heaven smiled above her,
As she lingered towards the deep.
II.
Then Alpheus bold,
On his glacier cold,
With his trident the mountains strook;
And opened a chasm
In the rocks—with the spasm
All Erymanthus shook.
And the black south wind
It unsealed behind
The urns of the silent snow,
And earthquake and thunder
Did rend in sunder
The bars of the springs below.
And the beard and the hair
Of the River-god were
Seen through the torrent’s sweep,
As he followed the light
Of the fleet nymph’s flight
To the brink of the Dorian deep.
III.
'Oh, save me! Oh, guide me!
And bid the deep hide me,
For he grasps me now by the hair!'
The loud Ocean heard,
To its blue depth stirred,
And divided at her prayer;
And under the water
The Earth’s white daughter
Fled like a sunny beam;
Behind her descended
Her billows, unblended
With the brackish Dorian stream:—
Like a gloomy stain
On the emerald main
Alpheus rushed behind,--
As an eagle pursuing
A dove to its ruin
Down the streams of the cloudy wind.
IV.
Under the bowers
Where the Ocean Powers
Sit on their pearled thrones;
Through the coral woods
Of the weltering floods,
Over heaps of unvalued stones;
Through the dim beams
Which amid the streams
Weave a network of coloured light;
And under the caves,
Where the shadowy waves
Are as green as the forest’s night:--
Outspeeding the shark,
And the sword-fish dark,
Under the Ocean’s foam,
And up through the rifts
Of the mountain clifts
They passed to their Dorian home.
V.
And now from their fountains
In Enna’s mountains,
Down one vale where the morning basks,
Like friends once parted
Grown single-hearted,
They ply their watery tasks.
At sunrise they leap
From their cradles steep
In the cave of the shelving hill;
At noontide they flow
Through the woods below
And the meadows of asphodel;
And at night they sleep
In the rocking deep
Beneath the Ortygian shore;--
Like spirits that lie
In the azure sky
When they love but live no more.
Scheme | ABBCDDCEEFGGFDDHIIH AJJDKKDLLMIIMNIHOOH APPNQQNIIRSJRTTLDXL XUUBXXXFFOVVODDWXBW PCCXSSXHHYMMYHHZAAZ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (27%) |
Metre | 1 101 10111 00110 11011 11001 1000110 11101 1011 100101 01111 01001 1110101 010010 111010 0101111 011110 0101010 11100101 1 111 11101 11100101 010010 0011010 111 00111 10101 0110101 01010 11010 0110101 001001 101010 110101 111001 10111 101101001 1 111111 010111 11111101 01101 11111 0010101 010010 01110 110101 010010 0101 10101001 10101 10101 1101 1110010 011110 10110101 1 10010 101010 11111 10101 1011 101111 1011 10101 1011101 01001 101001 11110101 101 00111 100101 01101 10101 11111001 1 011110 0110 11110101 11110 11010 1111001 1111 11101 00110101 1111 10101 00111 01111 00101 01011 11011 00101 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 2,296 |
Words | 428 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 19, 19, 19, 19, 19 |
Lines Amount | 95 |
Letters per line (avg) | 20 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 372 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 84 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 2:08 min read
- 629 Views
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"Arethusa" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29041/arethusa>.
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