Analysis of The Idols
An Ode
Luce intellettual, piena d' amore
Prelude
Lo, the spirit of a pulsing star within a stone
Born of earth, sprung from night!
Prisoned with the profound fires of the light
That lives like all the tongues of eloquence
Locked in a speech unknown!
The crystal, cold and hard as innocence,
Immures the flame; and yet as if it knew
Raptures or pangs it could not but betray,
As if the light could feel changes of blood and breath
And all--but--human quiverings of the sense,
Throbs of a sudden rose, a frosty blue,
Shoot thrilling in its ray,
Like the far longings of the intellect
Restless in clouding clay.
Who has confined the Light? Who has held it a slave,
Sold and bought, bought and sold?
Who has made of it a mystery to be doled,
Or trophy, to awe with legendary fire,
Where regal banners wave?
And still into the dark it sends Desire.
In the heart's darkness it sows cruelties.
The bright jewel becomes a beacon to the vile,
A lodestar to corruption, envy's own:
Soiled with blood, fought for, clutched at; this world's prize,
Captive Authority. Oh, the star is stone
To all that outward sight,
Yet still, like truth that none has ever used,
Lives lost in its own light.
Troubled I fly. O let me wander again at will
(Far from cries, far from these
Hard blindnesses and frozen certainties!)
Where life proceeds in vastness unaware
And stirs profound and still:
Where leafing thoughts at shy touch of the air
Tremble, and gleams come seeking to be mine,
Or dart, like suddenly remembered youth,
Like the ache of love, a light, lost, found, and lost again.
Surely in the dusk some messenger was there!
But, haunted in the heart, I thirst, I pine.--
Oh, how can truth be truth
Except I taste it close and sweet and sharp
As an apple to the tooth?
I.1
On a starr'd, a still mid--night
Lost I halted, lost I gazed about.
Great shapes of trees branched black into the sky:
There was no way but wandered into doubt;
There was no light
In the uncertain desert of dim air
But such as told me of all that was not I,--
Of powers absorbed, intent, and active without sound,
That rooted in their unimagined might,
Over me there ignoring towered and spread.
Homeless in my humanity, and drowned
In a dark world, I listened, all aware;
And that world drew me.
The shadowy crossing of the boughs above my head
Enmeshed me as with undecipherable spells:
The silence laid invisible hands upon my heart,
And the Night knew me.
She put not forth her full power, well I knew:
She only toyed
With reason, used to sunshine flatteries,
The praise of happy senses, trusted true,
And smile of stable Earth's affirming ease.
Yet even in this her ante--room I felt,
Near me, that void
Without foundation, roof, or bound, or end,
Where the eyes fast from their food, the heavenly light,
The untallied senses falter, being denied,
The mind into itself is pressed, is penned,
Even memoried glories of experience melt
Into one mapless, eyeless, elemental Night.
It was so near
That like a swimmer toiled in a full--streaming tide
Drawing him unawares down the unsounded seas,
My soul sank into fear.
O for one far beam of the absenting sun!
O for a voice to assure me, and to release
Out of this clutching silence! There is none:
Shadow on shadow, and stillness on stillness
Enclose me, and fasten round.
Is this a world which Day never has known?
A world made only of doubt and dream and dread?
Is this the interior Night of the dark human soul,
And the immaterial blackness branching from the ground
A fearful forest that itself has sown
Against the stars to tower,--
Stars that dispense their faint uncertain dole
Of light, that darkness may the more abound?
Whither am I come? Where have my wandered feet
Brought me on circling steps, led by what furtive power?
Alas! in this dumb gloom wherein my spirit gropes
Only myself I meet.
Only myself; but in what strange image
Encountered and phantasmally surprised!
This thing of stealth that rises from the shrouds of sleep,
I know it, I with shuddering guess presage
An enemy,--the native of the night
That in me was disguised.
Hollow--echoing caverns where blind rivers creep
With soundless motion; ice--cold, sudden breath
Of climbing cloud, at whose abstracting touch
The upholding rock seems baseless as the mist;
Black silence in the eagle's captive stare
Empty of all but the baulked lust of death,
Could not oppress so much.
Even that which in the dark brain sa
Scheme | XX XABBCACDEFXDEXE GHHIGIJXAXABXB KJJLKLMNXLMNXN OBPOPBLOQBRQLSRXXS DTCDJUTVBWVUBXWJX YXYXQARZQAIZQ1 IC1 X2 3 XB2 3 F4 XLF4 X |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11 111110 1 1010101010101 111111 10100110101 1111011100 100101 0101011100 101011111 111111101 110111101101 011101101 1101010101 110011 101101010 100101 110101111101 101101 111110100111 11011110010 110101 01010111010 001101110 011001010101 01101011 1111111111 10010010111 111101 1111111101 110111 1011111100111 111111 11010100 110101001 010101 1101111101 1001110111 1111000101 1011101110101 10001110011 1100011111 111111 0111110101 1110101 1 1010111 111011101 1111110101 1111110011 1111 0001010111 11111111111 1100101010011 110010101 10110101001 1001010001 0011110101 01111 0100101010111 0111111 0101010010111 00111 11110110111 1101 1101111 0111010101 0111010101 11001010111 1111 0101011111 101111101001 0110101001 0101011111 10110101001 0111100101 1111 110101001101 101011011 111011 111111011 110110110101 1111010111 111010110 0110101 1101111011 01110110101 11001001101101 0001001010101 0101010111 0101110 1101110101 1111010101 10111111101 11110011111010 010111011101 10111 101101110 0100101 111111010111 11111100110 1100010101 101101 101001011101 111011101 11011111 00101110101 1100010101 1011101111 110111 101100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,286 |
Words | 792 |
Sentences | 38 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 15, 14, 14, 18, 17, 17, 14 |
Lines Amount | 111 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 431 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 98 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 11, 2023
- 3:59 min read
- 53 Views
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"The Idols" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/43443/the-idols>.
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