Analysis of The Phantom Ship. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
In Mather's Magnalia Christi,
Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
That is here set down in rhyme.
A ship sailed from New Haven,
And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,
Were heavy with good men's prayers.
'O Lord! if it be thy pleasure'--
Thus prayed the old divine--
'To bury our friends in the ocean,
Take them, for they are thine!'
But Master Lamberton muttered,
And under his breath said he,
'This ship is so crank and walty
I fear our grave she will be!'
And the ships that came from England,
When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel
Nor of Master Lamberton.
This put the people to praying
That the Lord would let them hear
What in his greater wisdom
He had done with friends so dear.
And at last their prayers were answered:--
It was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset
Of a windy afternoon,
When, steadily steering landward,
A ship was seen below,
And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
Who sailed so long ago.
On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
Right against the wind that blew,
Until the eye could distinguish
The faces of the crew.
Then fell her straining topmasts,
Hanging tangled in the shrouds,
And her sails were loosened and lifted,
And blown away like clouds.
And the masts, with all their rigging,
Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
As a sea-mist in the sun!
And the people who saw this marvel
Each said unto his friend,
That this was the mould of their vessel,
And thus her tragic end.
And the pastor of the village
Gave thanks to God in prayer,
That, to quiet their troubled spirits,
He had sent this Ship of Air.
Scheme | ABCBDEFEGHDHIAAACJKDFLMNIOPOIQGQRSTSEUVUFDWDKXKXYZ1 Z |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110 10101001 11101010 1111101 0111110 0010101 1101110 0101111 11111110 110101 1101010010 111111 11010010 0101111 1111101 11101111 00111110 1010101 11101110 1110100 11010110 1011111 1011010 1111111 01111010 1100111 1100101 101001 11001010 011101 0111110010 111101 111101110 1010111 01011010 010101 110101 1010001 001010010 010111 00111110 110111 001010010 1011001 001011110 111011 111011110 010101 00101010 111101 111011010 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,614 |
Words | 313 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 52 |
Lines Amount | 52 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,275 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 308 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 17, 2023
- 1:34 min read
- 160 Views
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"The Phantom Ship. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18897/the-phantom-ship.-%28birds-of-passage.-flight-the-first%29>.
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