Analysis of The Winter Lakes
William Wilfred Campbell 1860 (Newmarket) – 1918 (Ottawa)
Out in a world of death far to the northward lying,
Under the sun and the moon, under the dusk and the day;
Under the glimmer of stars and the purple of sunsets dying,
Wan and waste and white, stretch the great lakes away.
Never a bud of spring, never a laugh of summer,
Never a dream of love, never a song of bird;
But only the silence and white, the shores that grow chiller and dumber,
Wherever the ice winds sob, and the griefs of winter are heard.
Crags that are black and wet out of the grey lake looming,
Under the sunset's flush and the pallid, faint glimmer of dawn;
Shadowy, ghost-like shores, where midnight surfs are booming
Thunders of wintry woe over the spaces wan.
Lands that loom like spectres, whited regions of winter,
Wastes of desolate woods, deserts of water and shore;
A world of winter and death, within these regions who enter,
Lost to summer and life, go to return no more.
Moons that glimmer above, waters that lie white under,
Miles and miles of lake far out under the night;
Foaming crests of waves, surfs that shoreward thunder,
Shadowy shapes that flee, haunting the spaces white.
Lonely hidden bays, moon-lit, ice-rimmed, winding,
Fringed by forests and crags, haunted by shadowy shores;
Hushed from the outward strife, where the mighty surf is grinding
Death and hate on the rocks, as sandward and landward it roars.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD AXAX CECE CFCF AGAG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (83%) |
Metre | 1001111101010 10010011001001 100101100101110 10101101101 1001111001110 100111100111 11001001011110010 010011100111011 1111011101110 10011001011011 100111111110 101101100101 111111010110 1110011011001 011100101110110 111001110111 1110011011110 10111111001 10111111010 100111100101 10101111110 1110011011001 11010110101110 1011011101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,452 |
Words | 242 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 44 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 177 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 14, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 303 Views
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"The Winter Lakes" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/42106/the-winter-lakes>.
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