Analysis of In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, Cruel Fellowship
Alfred Lord Tennyson 1809 – 1892
O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,
O Priestess in the vaults of Death,
O sweet and bitter in a breath,
What whispers from thy lying lip?
"The stars," she whispers, "blindly run;
A web is wov'n across the sky;
From out waste places comes a cry,
And murmurs from the dying sun:
"And all the phantom, Nature, stands--
With all the music in her tone,
A hollow echo of my own,--
A hollow form with empty hands."
And shall I take a thing so blind,
Embrace her as my natural good;
Or crush her, like a vice of blood,
Upon the threshold of the mind?
Scheme | ABBA CDDC EFFE GXXG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (75%) |
Metre | 1101010 11000111 11010001 11011101 01110101 01110101 11110101 01010101 01010101 11010001 01010111 01011101 01110111 010111001 11010111 0101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 530 |
Words | 108 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 100 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 32 sec read
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"In Memoriam 3: O Sorrow, Cruel Fellowship" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/995/in-memoriam-3%3A-o-sorrow%2C-cruel-fellowship>.
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