Analysis of At Dawn
Roderic Quinn 1867 (Surry Hills, New South Wales) – 1949 (Darlinghurst, New South Wales)
THE night-long clamour of winds grew still;
The forest rested, its foes withdrawn;
On sounding ocean and silent hill
There crept a sense of the coming dawn.
A bird awoke on a leaning limb
And fluttered its plumes a moment's space;
Dark purple lay on the sea's far rim:
The sky grew pale as a dying face.
Then all the trees and the rocks and heights
With wondering faces watched the East:
It seemed an altar hung with lights
And waiting for a vestured priest.
And in that intimate first hour
When land and sea rejoiced as one,
And Nature, like an opening flower,
Gave incense, came the burning sun.
Yet, while the hour of gold went by,
I saw through all its pageantry
The vast indifference of the sky,
The heartless beauty of the sea.
For wet and wan, and cold and sped
Beyond the breakers' reach of pearl,
There lay a strong man drowned and dead,
And in his arms a drowned white girl.
Scheme | ABABCDCDEFEFGHGHIJIJKLKL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Traditional rhyme |
Metre | 01111111 010101101 110100101 110110101 010110101 010110101 110110111 011110101 110100101 110010101 11110111 0101011 001100110 11010111 0101110010 10110101 110101111 11111100 010100101 01010101 11010101 01010111 11011101 00110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 869 |
Words | 168 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 693 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 166 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 84 Views
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"At Dawn" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32917/at-dawn>.
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