Analysis of The River Note
And I behold once more
My old familiar haunts; here the blue river,
The same blue wonder that my infant eye
Admired, sage doubting whence the traveller came,--
Whence brought his sunny bubbles ere he washed
The fragrant flag-roots in my father's fields,
And where thereafter in the world he went.
Look, here he is, unaltered, save that now
He hath broke his banks and flooded all the vales
With his redundant waves.
Here is the rock where, yet a simple child,
I caught with bended pin my earliest fish,
Much triumphing,--and these the fields
Over whose flowers I chased the butterfly,
A blooming hunter of a fairy fine.
And hark! where overhead the ancient crows
Hold their sour conversation in the sky:--
These are the same, but I am not the same,
But wiser than I was, and wise enough
Not to regret the changes, tho' they cost
Me many a sigh. Oh, call not Nature dumb;
These trees and stones are audible to me,
These idle flowers, that tremble in the wind,
I understand their faery syllables,
And all their sad significance. The wind,
That rustles down the well-known forest road--
It hath a sound more eloquent than speech.
The stream, the trees, the grass, the sighing wind,
All of them utter sounds of 'monishment
And grave parental love.
They are not of our race, they seem to say,
And yet have knowledge of our moral race,
And somewhat of majestic sympathy,
Something of pity for the puny clay,
That holds and boasts the immeasurable mind.
I feel as I were welcome to these trees
After long months of weary wandering,
Acknowledged by their hospitable boughs;
They know me as their son, for side by side,
They were coeval with my ancestors,
Adorned with them my country's primitive times,
And soon may give my dust their funeral shade.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLFCMNCDOPQRSTSUVSEWXYRXSZ1 2 3 4 5 6 |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010111 11010110110 0111011101 010110101001 1111010111 0101101101 0101000111 1111010111 11111010101 110101 1101110101 11110111001 110101 1011011010 0101010101 0111010101 1110010001 1101111101 1101110101 1101010111 11001111101 1101110011 11010110001 10111100 0111010001 111011101 1101110011 0101010101 11110111 010101 11111011111 01110110101 0111010100 1011010101 1101001001 1111010111 1011110100 0101111001 1111111111 1011110 01111101001 01111111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,708 |
Words | 315 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 42 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,368 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 310 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:35 min read
- 70 Views
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"The River Note" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29874/the-river-note>.
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