Analysis of Nemesis
Howard Phillips Lovecraft 1890 (Providence, Rhode Island) – 1937 (Providence, Rhode Island)
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
I have whirl’d with the earth at the dawning,
When the sky was a vaporous flame;
I have seen the dark universe yawning,
Where the black planets roll without aim;
Where they roll in their horror unheeded, without knowledge or lustre or name.
I had drifted o’er seas without ending,
Under sinister grey-clouded skies
That the many-fork’d lightning is rending,
That resound with hysterical cries;
With the moans of invisible daemons that out of the green waters rise.
I have plung’d like a deer thro’ the arches
Of the hoary primordial grove,
Where the oaks feel the presence that marches
And stalks on where no spirit dares rove;
And I flee from a thing that surrounds me, and leers thro’ dead branches above.
I have stumbled by cave-ridden mountains
That rise barren and bleak from the plain,
I have drunk of the fog-foetid fountains
That ooze down to the marsh and the main;
And in hot cursed tarns I have seen things I care not to gaze on again.
I have scann’d the vast ivy-clad palace,
I have trod its untenanted hall,
Where the moon writhing up from the valleys
Shews the tapestried things on the wall;
Strange figures discordantly woven, which I cannot endure to recall.
I have peer’d from the casement in wonder
At the mouldering meadows around,
At the many-roof’d village laid under
The curse of a grave-girdled ground;
And from rows of white urn-carven marble I listen intently for sound.
I have haunted the tombs of the ages,
I have flown on the pinions of fear
Where the smoke-belching Erebus rages,
Where the jokulls loom snow-clad and drear:
And in realms where the sun of the desert consumes what it never can cheer.
I was old when the Pharaohs first mounted
The jewel-deck’d throne by the Nile;
I was old in those epochs uncounted
When I, and I only, was vile;
And Man, yet untainted and happy, dwelt in bliss on the far Arctic isle.
Oh, great was the sin of my spirit,
And great is the reach of its doom;
Not the pity of Heaven can cheer it,
Nor can respite be found in the tomb:
Down the infinite aeons come beating the wings of unmerciful gloom.
Thro’ the ghoul-guarded gateways of slumber,
Past the wan-moon’d abysses of night,
I have liv’d o’er my lives without number,
I have sounded all things with my sight;
And I struggle and shriek ere the daybreak, being driven to madness with fright.
Scheme | ABABB cdcdd cecee fghgx ijijx xkxkk alall fmham xnxnn xoxoo ABABB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101101110 1011111 1111110110 111011111 011001101101011011 1111011010 1011011 111011010 101101011 1110110010011011011 1110110110 101001101 1010110110 11101001 10110100111101101 1111011010 101001001 1011010110 011111011 011101101101111001 1110111010 111001101 111101110 111101001 00111111111111101 1110110110 111111 1011011010 1011101 11011011100111 111101010 101101 1010110110 0110111 01111111011001011 1110011010 11110111 10110110 10111101 001101101001111011 1111010110 01011101 111011010 11011011 011010010101101101 111011110 01101111 1010110111 111011001 10100111001111 101101110 1011111 1111110110 111011111 011001101101011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 2,539 |
Words | 456 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 55 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 183 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 41 |
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"Nemesis" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/53507/nemesis>.
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