Analysis of Prelude
What a twitter! what a tumult! what a whirr of wheeling wings!
Birds of Passage hear the message which the Equinoctial brings.
Birds of Passage hear the message and beneath the flying clouds,
Mid the falling leaves of autumn, congregate in clamorous crowds.
Shall they venture on the voyage? are the nestlings fledged for flight;
Fit to face the fluctuant storm-winds and the elemental night?
What a twitter! what a tumult! to the wild wind's marching song
Multitudinous Birds of Passage round the cliffs of England throng.
And o'er tempest-trodden Ocean, cloud-entangled day and night,
Birds on birds, in corporate motion, wing a commonwealth in flight.
Waves, like hollow graves beneath them, hoarsely howling, yawn for prey;
And the welkin glooms above them shifting formless, grey in grey.
And across the Bay of Biscay on undaunted wing they flee,
Where mild seas move musically murmuring of the Odyssey;
Where the gurgling whirlpools glitter and by soft Circean Straits,
Fell Charybdis lies in ambush, and the ravenous Scylla waits;
Where a large Homeric laughter lingers in the echoing caves,
And in playful exultation Dolphins leap from dimpling waves;
Where, above the fair Sicilian, flock-browsed, flower-pranked meadows, looms
Ætna--hoariest of Volcanoes--ominously veiled in fumes;
Where the seas roll blue and bluer, high and higher arch the skies,
And as measureless as ocean new horizons meet the eyes;
Where at night the ancient heavens bend above the ancient earth,
With the young-eyed Stars enkindled fresh as at their hour of birth;
Where old Egypt's desert, stretching leagues on leagues of level land,
Gleams with threads of channelled waters, green with palms on either hand;
Where the Fellah strides majestic through the glimmering dourah plain,
And in rosy flames flamingoes rise from rustling sugar-cane;--
On and on, along old Nilus, seeking still an ampler light,
O'er its monumental mountains, Birds of Passage take their flight.
Where the sacred Isle of Philæ, twinned within the sacred stream,
Floats, like some rapt Opium-eater's labyrinthine lotos dream,
Birds on birds take up their quarters in each creviced capital,
In each crack of frieze and cornice, in each cleft of roof and wall.
And within those twilight-litten, holy halls of Death and Birth,
Even the gaily twittering swallows, even the swallows, hush their breath.
And they cast the passing shadows of their palpitating wings
O'er the fallen gods of Egypt and the prostrate heads of Kings.
Even as shadows Birds of Passage cast upon their onward flight
Have men's generations vanished, waned and vanished into night.
Scheme | AA BB CC DD CC EE FF GG HH II JJ KK LL MM CC NN XX KX AA CC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101010101011101 111010101011 111010100010101 1010111010011 111010101010111 1110111000101 101010101011101 111101011101 0101010101010101 111010010101001 11101011110111 0011011101101 00101111010111 111110010010100 1010011001111 1110100100101 1010101010001001 00101101111 1010101001110111 1110101000101 101110101010101 0111101010101 111010101010101 10111111111011 111010101111101 11111101111101 10110101010011 0010111110101 1010111101111 101010101110111 10101111010101 111110010111 11111110011100 01111010111101 00111101011101 1001011010010111 01101011110001 1001011100010111 101111101011101 11010101010011 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 2,619 |
Words | 421 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 20 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 53 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 105 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:08 min read
- 109 Views
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"Prelude" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/27048/prelude>.
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