Analysis of The Children Of The Foam

William Wilfred Campbell 1860 (Newmarket) – 1918 (Ottawa)



OUT forever and forever,
Where our tresses glint and shiver
On the icy moonlit air;
Come we from a land of gloaming,
Children lost, forever homing,
Never, never reaching there;
Ride we, ride we, ever faster,
Driven by our demon master,
The wild wind in his despair.
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Wan, white children of the foam.

In the wild October dawning,
When the heaven's angry awning
Leans to lakeward, bleak and drear;
And along the black, wet ledges,
Under icy, caverned edges,
Breaks the lake in maddened fear;
And the woods in shore are moaning;
Then you hear our weird intoning,
Mad, late children of the year;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Lost, white children of the foam.

All grey day, the black sky under,
Where the beaches moan and thunder,
Where the breakers spume and comb,
You may hear our riding, riding,
You may hear our voices chiding,
Under glimmer, under gloam;
Like a far-off infant wailing,

You may hear our hailing, hailing,
For the voices of our home;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Haunted children of the foam.

And at midnight, when the glimmer
Of the moon grows dank and dimmer,
Then we lift our gleaming eyes;
Then you see our white arms tossing,
Our wan breasts the moon embossing,
Under gloom of lake and skies;
You may hear our mournful chanting,
And our voices haunting, haunting,
Through the night's mad melodies;
Riding, riding, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.

There, forever and forever,
Will no demon-hate dissever
Peace and sleep and rest and dream:
There is neither fear nor fret there
When the tired children get there,
Only dews and pallid beam
Fall in gentle peace and sadness
Over long surcease of madness,
From hushed skies that gleam and gleam,
In the longed-for, sought-for home
Of the children of the foam.

There the streets are hushed and restful,
And of dreams is every breast full,
With the sleep that tired eyes wear;
There the city hath long quiet
From the madness and the riot,
From the failing hearts of care;
Balm of peacefulness ingliding,
Dream we through our riding, riding,
As we homeward, homeward fare;
Riding, riding, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.

Under pallid moonlight beaming,
Under stars of midnight gleaming,
And the ebon arch of night;
Round the rosy edge of morning,
You may hear our distant horning,
You may mark our phantom flight;
Riding, riding, ever faster,
Driven by our demon master,
Under darkness, under light;
Ride we, ride we, ever home,
Wild, white children of the foam.


Scheme aabccbaAbDd ccaxxecceDd aadccdc cdDd aafccfccxDD aagbbghhgdd xxbiibccbDD ccjccjaAjDD
Poetic Form
Metre 10100010 110101010 101011 11101110 10101010 1010101 11111010 101101010 0110101 1111101 1110101 00101010 10101010 111101 00101110 1010110 101011 00101110 111101010 1110101 1111101 1110101 11101110 10101010 1010101 111101010 111101010 1010101 10111010 111101010 10101101 1111101 1010101 0111010 10111010 11110101 111101110 1011011 1011101 111101010 010101010 1011100 1010101 1110101 10100010 111011 1010101 11101111 10101011 1010101 10101010 1011110 1111101 0011111 1010101 10111010 011110011 10111011 10101110 10100010 1010111 111001 111101010 1110101 1010101 1110101 1010110 1011110 001111 10101110 111101010 11110101 10101010 101101010 1010101 1111101 1110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 2,409
Words 435
Sentences 9
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 11, 11, 7, 4, 11, 11, 11, 11
Lines Amount 77
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 242
Words per stanza (avg) 54
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:11 min read
104

William Wilfred Campbell

William Wilfred Campbell (1 June ca. 1860 – 1 January 1918) was a Canadian poet. He is often classed as one of the country's Confederation Poets, a group that included fellow Canadians Charles G. D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, and Duncan Campbell Scott; he was a colleague of Lampman and Scott. By the end of the 19th century, he was considered the "unofficial poet laureate of Canada." Although not as well known as the other Confederation poets today, Campbell was a "versatile, interesting writer" who was influenced by Robert Burns, the English Romantics, Edgar Allan Poe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Carlyle, and Alfred Tennyson. Inspired by these writers, Campbell expressed his own religious idealism in traditional forms and genres.  more…

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