Despondency

Archibald Lampman 1861 (Upper Canada) – 1899 (Ottawa, Canada)



Slow figures in some live remorseless frieze,
The approaching days escapeless and unguessed,
With mask and shroud impenetrably dressed;
Time, whose inexorable destinies
Bear down upon us like impending seas;
And the huge presence of the world, at best
A sightless giant wandering without rest,
Aged and mad with many miseries.

The weight and measure of these things who knows?
Resting at times beside life's thought-swept stream,
Sobered and stunned with unexpected blows,
We scarcely hear the uproar; life doth seem,
Save for the certain nearness of its woes,
Vain and phantasmal as a sick man's dream.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
93

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABBAABBA CDCDCD
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 598
Words 99
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6

Archibald Lampman

Archibald Lampman FRSC was a Canadian poet. "He has been described as 'the Canadian Keats;' and he is perhaps the most outstanding exponent of the Canadian school of nature poets." The Canadian Encyclopedia says that he is "generally considered the finest of Canada's late 19th-century poets in English." Lampman is classed as one of Canada's Confederation Poets, a group which also includes Charles G.D. Roberts, Bliss Carman, and Duncan Campbell Scott. more…

All Archibald Lampman poems | Archibald Lampman Books

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