Analysis of On The Death Of Dr. Samuel Marshall
Phillis Wheatley 1753 (West Africa) – 1784 (Boston)
THROUGH thickest glooms look back, immortal
shade,
On that confusion which thy death has made:
Or from Olympus' height look down, and see
A Town involv'd in grief bereft of thee.
Thy Lucy sees thee mingle with the dead,
And rends the graceful tresses from her head,
Wild in her woe, with grief unknown opprest
Sigh follows sigh deep heaving from her breast.
Too quickly fled, ah! whither art thou gone?
Ah! lost for ever to thy wife and son!
The hapless child, thine only hope and heir,
Clings round his mother's neck, and weeps his sorrows
there.
The loss of thee on Tyler's soul returns,
And Boston for her dear physician mourns.
When sickness call'd for Marshall's healing hand,
With what compassion did his soul expand?
In him we found the father and the friend:
In life how lov'd! how honour'd in his end!
And must not then our AEsculapius stay
To bring his ling'ring infant into day?
The babe unborn in the dark womb is tost,
And seems in anguish for its father lost.
Gone is Apollo from his house of earth,
But leaves the sweet memorials of his worth:
The common parent, whom we all deplore,
From yonder world unseen must come no more,
Yet 'midst our woes immortal hopes attend
The spouse, the sire, the universal friend.
Scheme | ABBCCDDBEFGHIHJKLLMMNNBOPPQQMM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (23%) |
Metre | 110111010 1 1101011111 1101011101 0101010111 1101110101 0101010101 100111011 1101110101 1101110111 1111011101 0101110101 11110101110 1 0111110101 0101010101 1101110101 1101011101 0111010001 011111011 01111011 1111110011 0111001111 0101011101 1101011111 11010100111 0101011101 1101011111 11101010101 0101000101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,219 |
Words | 223 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 30 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 962 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 221 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 27, 2023
- 1:09 min read
- 147 Views
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"On The Death Of Dr. Samuel Marshall" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29373/on-the-death-of-dr.-samuel-marshall>.
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