Analysis of The Happiest Land. (From The German)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
There sat one day in quiet,
By an alehouse on the Rhine,
Four hale and hearty fellows,
And drank the precious wine.
The landlord's daughter filled their cups
Around the rustic board;
Then sat they all so calm and still,
And spake not one rude word.
But, when the maid departed,
A Swabian raised his hand,
And cried, all hot and flushed with wine,
'Long live the Swabian land!
'The greatest kingdom upon earth
Cannot with that compare;
With all the stout and hardy men
And the nut-brown maidens there.'
Ha! cried a Saxon, laughing,--
And dashed his beard with wine;
' I had rather live in Lapland,
Than that Swabian land of thine!
The goodliest land on all this earth,
It is the Saxon land!
There have I as many maidens
As fingers on this hand!
Hold your tongues! both Swabian and Saxon!
A bold Bohemian cries;
'If there's a heaven upon this earth,
In Bohemia it lies.
There the tailor blows the flute,
And the cobbler blows the horn,
And the miner blows the bugle,
Over mountain gorge and bourn.
And then the landlord's daughter
Up to heaven raised her hand,
And said, Ye may no more contend,--
There lies the happiest land!
Scheme | XAXA XXXX XBAB CDXD XABA CBXB XECE XFXF XBXB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (89%) |
Metre | 1111010 111101 1101010 010101 0110111 010101 11111101 011111 1101010 01111 01110111 11011 01010011 101101 11010101 0011101 1101010 011111 1110101 111111 0111111 110101 11111010 110111 11111010 0101001 110100111 0010011 1010101 0010101 00101010 1010101 010110 1110101 01111101 1101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,102 |
Words | 211 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 97 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 1:03 min read
- 86 Views
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"The Happiest Land. (From The German)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18872/the-happiest-land.-%28from-the-german%29>.
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