Analysis of Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. Interlude I.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
'O Edrehi, forbear to-night
Your ghostly legends of affright,
And let the Talmud rest in peace;
Spare us your dismal tales of death
That almost take away one's breath;
So doing, may your tribe increase.'
Thus the Sicilian said; then went
And on the spinet's rattling keys
Played Marianina, like a breeze
From Naples and the Southern seas,
That brings us the delicious scent
Of citron and of orange trees,
And memories of soft days of ease
At Capri and Amalfi spent.
'Not so,' the eager Poet said;
'At least, not so before I tell
The story of my Azrael,
An angel mortal as ourselves,
Which in an ancient tome I found
Upon a convent's dusty shelves,
Chained with an iron chain, and bound
In parchment, and with clasps of brass,
Lest from its prison, some dark day,
It might be stolen or steal away,
While the good friars were singing mass.
'It is a tale of Charlemagne,
When like a thunder-cloud, that lowers
And sweeps from mountain-crest to coast,
With lightning flaming through its showers,
He swept across the Lombard plain,
Beleaguering with his warlike train
Pavia, the country's pride and boast,
The City of the Hundred Towers.'
Thus heralded the tale began,
And thus in sober measure ran.
Scheme | AABCCB DEEEDEED XFFGHGHIJJI KLMLKKML NN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11111 1101011 01010101 11110111 1110111 11011101 100100111 0101101 11101 11000101 11100101 11001101 010011111 110011 11010101 11110111 010111 110101001 10110111 0101101 11110101 01001111 11110111 111101101 101100101 1101110 110101110 01110111 110101110 11010101 01001111 100010101 010101010 11000101 01010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,168 |
Words | 215 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 8, 11, 8, 2 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 187 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:04 min read
- 154 Views
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"Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. Interlude I." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18792/tales-of-a-wayside-inn-%3A-part-3.-interlude-i.>.
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