Analysis of Something Left Undone
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still
Waits the rising of the sun.
By the bedside, on the stair,
At the threshhold, near the gates,
With its menace or its prayer,
Like a medicant it waits;
Waits, and will not go away;
Waits, and will not be gainsaid;
By the cares of yesterday
Each to-day is heavier made;
Till at length the burden seems
Greater than our strength can bear,
Heavy as the weight of dreams
Pressing on us everywhere.
And we stand from day to day,
Like the dwarfs of times gone by,
Who, as Northern legends say,
On their shoulders held the sky.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GCGC EHEH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1011111 1010101 100101 1010101 101101 101101 1110111 10111 1011101 101111 101110 11111001 1110101 10110111 1010111 101110 0111111 1011111 1110101 1110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 598 |
Words | 113 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 95 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 146 Views
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"Something Left Undone" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18723/something-left-undone>.
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