Analysis of Voices Of The Night : The Reaper And The Flowers
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
There is a Reaper whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
'Shall I have nought that is fair?' saith he;
'Have nought but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,
I will give them all back again.'
He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.
'My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,'
The Reaper said, and smiled;
'Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.
'They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear.'
And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.
O, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
'Twas an angel visited the green earth,
And took the flowers away.
Scheme | ABAB CDCE XFXF GHGH IJIJ DKEK XGXG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (86%) |
Metre | 110101111 011101 110101101 00101101 111111111 1110101 10111101111 11111101 1110101101 111101 11101110 111011 11111111 010101 11010111 111101 11110111 010111 01011101 110101 001010101 0101111 111111101 0011101 11010101 010111 1110100011 0101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 963 |
Words | 191 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 72 Views
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