Analysis of Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. Interlude II.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
'I thought before your tale began,'
The Student murmured, 'we should have
Some legend written by Judah Rav
In his Gemara of Babylon;
Or something from the Gulistan,--
The tale of the Cazy of Hamadan,
Or of that King of Khorasan
Who saw in dreams the eyes of one
That had a hundred years been dead
Still moving restless in his head,
Undimmed, and gleaming with the lust
Of power, though all the rest was dust.
'But lo! your glittering caravan
On the road that leadeth to Ispahan
Hath led us farther to the East
Into the regions of Cathay.
Spite of your Kalif and his gold,
Pleasant has been the tale you told,
And full of color; that at least
No one will question or gainsay.
And yet on such a dismal day
We need a merrier tale to clear
The dark and heavy atmosphere.
So listen, Lordlings, while I tell,
Without a preface, what befell
A simple cobbler, in the year ?
No matter; it was long ago;
And that is all we need to know.'
Scheme | ABBXAAAXCCDD AAEFGGEFFHHIIHJJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011101 01010111 110101101 011110 110101 0110111 111111 11010111 11010111 11010011 1010101 110110111 11110010 1011111 11110101 01010101 1111011 10110111 01110111 1111011 01110101 110100111 0101010 1101111 01010101 01010001 11011101 01111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 908 |
Words | 182 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 16 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 359 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 89 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 54 sec read
- 90 Views
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"Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 2. Interlude II." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18776/tales-of-a-wayside-inn-%3A-part-2.-interlude-ii.>.
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