Analysis of Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. Interlude VII.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Touched by the pathos of these rhymes,
The Theologian said: 'All praise
Be to the ballads of old times
And to the bards of simple ways,
Who walked with Nature hand in hand,
Whose country was their Holy Land,
Whose singing robes were homespun brown
From looms of their own native town,
Which they were not ashamed to wear,
And not of silk or sendal gay,
Nor decked with fanciful array
Of cockle-shells from Outre-Mer.'
To whom the Student answered: 'Yes;
All praise and honor! I confess
That bread and ale, home-baked, home-brewed,
Are wholesome and nutritious food,
But not enough for all our needs;
Poets--the best of them--are birds
Of passage; where their instinct leads
They range abroad for thoughts and words,
And from all climes bring home the seeds
That germinate in flowers or weeds.
They are not fowls in barnyards born
To cackle o'er a grain of corn;
And, if you shut the horizon down
To the small limits of their town,
What do you but degrade your bard
Till he at last becomes as one
Who thinks the all-encircling sun
Rises and sets in his back yard?'
The Theologian said again:
'It may be so; yet I maintain
That what is native still is best,
And little care I for the rest.
'T is a long story; time would fail
To tell it, and the hour is late;
We will not waste it in debate,
But listen to our Landlord's tale.'
And thus the sword of Damocles
Descending not by slow degrees,
But suddenly, on the Landlord fell,
Who blushing, and with much demur
And many vain apologies,
Plucking up heart, began to tell
The Rhyme of one Sir Christopher.
Scheme | ABABCCDDEFFE GGHHIJIJIIKKDDLMML XXNNOPPO QQRSQRS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11010111 00100111 11010111 01011101 11110101 11011101 1101011 11111101 11010111 0111111 11110001 1101111 11010101 11010101 11011111 11000101 110111101 10011111 11011101 11011101 01111101 11001011 1111011 110100111 011100101 10110111 11110111 11110111 110101001 10010111 00100101 11111101 11110111 01011101 110110111 111001011 11111001 11011011 0101110 01011101 11001011 11001101 01010100 10110111 01111100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,514 |
Words | 289 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 18, 8, 7 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 302 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 71 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:26 min read
- 130 Views
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"Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 3. Interlude VII." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18798/tales-of-a-wayside-inn-%3A-part-3.-interlude-vii.>.
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