Analysis of Amphion
Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809 – 1892
MY father left a park to me,
But it is wild and barren,
A garden too with scarce a tree,
And waster than a warren:
Yet say the neighbours when they call,
It is not bad but good land,
And in it is the germ of all
That grows within the woodland.
O had I lived when song was great
In days of old Amphion,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
Nor cared for seed or scion!
And had I lived when song was great,
And legs of trees were limber,
And ta'en my fiddle to the gate,
And fiddled in the timber!
'Tis said he had a tuneful tongue,
Such happy intonation,
Wherever he sat down and sung
He left a small plantation;
Wherever in a lonely grove
He set up his forlorn pipes,
The gouty oak began to move,
And flounder into hornpipes.
The mountain stirr'd its bushy crown,
And, as tradition teaches,
Young ashes pirouetted down
Coquetting with young beeches;
And briony-vine and ivy-wreath
Ran forward to his rhyming,
And from the valleys underneath
Came little copses climbing.
The linden broke her ranks and rent
The woodbine wreaths that bind her,
And down the middle, buzz! she went
With all her bees behind her:
The poplars, in long order due,
With cypress promenaded,
The shock-head willows two and two
By rivers gallopaded.
Came wet-shod alder from the wave,
Came yews, a dismal coterie;
Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave,
Poussetting with a sloe-tree:
Old elms came breaking from the vine,
The vine stream'd out to follow,
And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine
From many a cloudy hollow.
And wasn't it a sight to see,
When, ere his song was ended,
Like some great landslip, tree by tree,
The country-side descended;
And shepherds from the mountain-eaves
Look'd down, half-pleased, half-frighten'd,
As dash'd about the drunken leaves
The random sunshine lighten'd!
Oh, nature first was fresh to men,
And wanton without measure;
So youthful and so flexile then,
You moved her at your pleasure.
Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs'
And make her dance attendance;
Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs,
And scirrhous roots and tendons.
'Tis vain ! in such a brassy age
I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedge
Scarce answer to my whistle;
'Or at the most, when three-parts-sick
With strumming and with scraping,
A jackass heehaws from the rick,
The passive oxen gaping.
But what is that I hear ? a sound
Like sleepy counsel pleading;
O Lord !--'tis in my neighbour's ground,
The modern Muses reading.
They read Botanic Treatises,
And Works on Gardening thro' there,
And Methods of transplanting trees
To look as if they grew there.
The wither'd Misses! how they prose
O'er books of travell'd seamen,
And show you slips of all that grows
From England to Van Diemen.
They read in arbours clipt and cut,
And alleys, faded places,
By squares of tropic summer shut
And warm'd in crystal cases.
But these, tho' fed with careful dirt,
Are neither green nor sappy;
Half-conscious of the garden-squirt,
The spindlings look unhappy.
Better to me the meanest weed
That blows upon its mountain,
The vilest herb that runs to seed
Beside its native fountain.
And I must work thro' months of toil,
And years of cultivation,
Upon my proper patch of soil
To grow my own plantation.
I'll take the showers as they fall,
I will not vex my bosom:
Enough if at the end of all
A little garden blossom.
Scheme | ababcdcd ebEbefEf gbgbxhxh ijihklkl mfmfndnd oaoapqpq ararstst ufufxxhx xvxvwlwl xlxljyxy zbzb1 j1 j 2 x2 a3 b3 b 4 b4 bc5 c5 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010111 1111010 01011101 0101010 1101111 1111111 00110111 110101 11111111 01111 011110101 1111110 01111111 0111010 011110101 0100010 11110101 1100010 01011101 110110 01000101 1111011 01010111 010011 01011101 0101010 11011 1111 0110101 1101110 0101001 110110 01010101 011110 01010111 1101010 0101101 1101 0111101 1101 11110101 11010100 11111101 11011 11110101 0111110 01010101 11001010 01010111 1111110 1111111 0101010 01010101 1111110 11010101 010110 11011111 0100110 1100111 1101110 11110101 0101010 11010111 011010 11010101 1111010 01010001 1101110 11011111 1100110 011101 0101010 11111101 1101010 1110111 0101010 11010100 01110011 01010101 1111111 01010111 10111010 01111111 110111 1101101 0101010 11110101 0101010 11111101 110111 11010101 011010 10110101 1101110 0111111 0111010 01111111 011010 01110111 111110 11010111 1111110 01110111 0101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 3,623 |
Words | 589 |
Sentences | 27 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 104 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 198 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 04, 2023
- 3:02 min read
- 105 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"Amphion" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/955/amphion>.
Discuss this Alfred Lord Tennyson poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In