Analysis of Solution
Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 (Boston) – 1882 (Concord)
I am the Muse who sung alway
By Jove, at dawn of the first day.
Star-crowned, sole-sitting, long I wrought
To fire the stagnant earth with thought:
On spawning slime my song prevails,
Wolves shed their fangs, and dragons scales;
Flushed in the sky the sweet May-morn,
Earth smiled with flowers, and man was born.
Then Asia yeaned her shepherd race,
And Nile substructs her granite base,--
Tented Tartary, columned Nile,--
And, under vines, on rocky isle,
Or on wind-blown sea-marge bleak,
Forward stepped the perfect Greek:
That wit and joy might find a tongue,
And earth grow civil, HOMER Sung.
Flown to Italy from Greece,
I brooded long, and held my peace,
For I am wont to sing uncalled,
And in days of evil plight
Unlock doors of new delight;
And sometimes mankind I appalled
With a bitter horoscope,
With spasms of terror for balm of hope.
Then by better thought I lead
Bards to speak what nations need;
So I folded me in fears,
And DANTE searched the triple spheres,
Moulding nature at his will,
So shaped, so coloured, swift or still,
And, sculptor-like, his large design
Etched on Alp and Apennine.
Seethed in mists of Penmanmaur,
Taught by Plinlimmon's Druid power,
England's genius filled all measure
Of heart and soul, of strength and pleasure,
Gave to the mind its emperor,
And life was larger than before:
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE's wit.
The men who lived with him became
Poets, for the air was fame.
Far in the North, where polar night
Holds in check the frolic light,
In trance upborne past mortal goal
The Swede EMANUEL leads the soul.
Through snows above, mines underground,
The inks of Erebus he found;
Rehearsed to men the damned wails
On which the seraph music sails,
In spirit-worlds he trod alone,
But walked the earth unmarked, unknown.
The near by-stander caught no sound,--
Yet they who listened far aloof
Heard rendings of the skyey roof,
And felt, beneath, the quaking ground;
And his air-sown, unheeded words,
In the next age, are flaming swords.
In newer days of war and trade,
Romance forgot, and faith decayed,
When Science armed and guided war,
And clerks the Janus-gates unbar,
When France, where poet never grew,
Halved and dealt the globe anew,
GOETHE, raised o'er joy and strife,
Drew the firm lines of Fate and Life,
And brought Olympian wisdom down
To court and mart, to gown and town,
Stooping, his finger wrote in clay
The open secret of to-day.
So bloom the unfading petals five,
And verses that all verse outlive.
Scheme | XABBCCDDEEFFGGHH IIJKKJLLXXMMNNXX OOOOOOPPQQ KKRRSSCCTTSUUSXX VVOOOXWWXXAA XX |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101111 11111011 11110111 110010111 11011101 11110101 10010111 111100111 11010101 0110101 11101 01011101 1111111 1010011 11011101 01110101 1110011 11010111 11111101 0011101 0111101 00111101 101010 1101101111 1110111 1111101 1110101 01010101 1010111 11110111 01011101 111010 10111 1111010 10101110 110111010 11011100 01110101 11010011 1001111 01111101 1010111 10011101 1010101 0111101 010100101 1101110 011111 0111011 1101101 01011101 11010101 01110111 11110101 111011 01010101 01110101 00111101 01011101 01010101 11010101 0101011 11110101 1010101 1110101 10111101 010100101 11011101 10110101 01010111 1101101 0101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,427 |
Words | 438 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 16, 10, 16, 12, 2 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 325 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 72 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:12 min read
- 78 Views
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"Solution" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29851/solution>.
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