Analysis of On Death
Percy Bysshe Shelley 1792 (Horsham) – 1822 (Lerici)
The pale, the cold, and the moony smile
Which the meteor beam of a starless night
Sheds on a lonely and sea-girt isle,
Ere the dawning of morn's undoubted light,
Is the flame of life so fickle and wan
That flits round our steps till their strength is gone.
O man! hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy wordly way,
And the billows of clouds that around thee roll
Shall sleep in the light of a wondrous day,
Where hell and heaven shall leave thee free
To the universe of destiny.
This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the mother of all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow
To a brain unencompass'd by nerves of steel:
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live, to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come?
Who painteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide-winding caves of the peopled tomb?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see?
Scheme | ABABXX CDCDEE FGFGEE XEXEHH XXXXEE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (27%) Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 01010011 1010011011 110100111 1010110101 1011111001 11110111111 1111101011 101011111 00101110111 1100110101 110101111 10101100 111011111 1110101111 00101110101 10111111 111111111 111101100 010110111 111111101 1011100101 1101111111 111101111 0010110101 1101111 110111111 11011101 0110110101 11011111 10100111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,238 |
Words | 247 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 197 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 1:14 min read
- 366 Views
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"On Death" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29183/on-death>.
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