Analysis of The Valley of the Shadow
There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation
At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus,
They were lost and unacquainted—till they found themselves in others,
Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.
There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions
Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows;
There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions,
All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.
There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water,
And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:
There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow,
Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.
There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken,
Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes,
Which had been, before the cradle, Time’s inexorable tenants
Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father’s dreams.
There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood,
Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago:
There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow,
The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know.
And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them,
Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth;
And they were going forward only farther into darkness,
Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth;
And among them, giving always what was not for their possession,
There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes;
There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow,
Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.
There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches,
Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves—
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember
Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves.
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation,
While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:
There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow,
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there.
There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them,
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel;
And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing,
Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal.
Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation,
But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt:
There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow,
Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out.
And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals
There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well;
And over beauty’s aftermath of hazardous ambitions
There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow,
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.
Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.
There were many by the presence of the many disaffected,
Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore:
There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow,
And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.
So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others,
And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn;
And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer
May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.
For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched,
Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed:
There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow,
And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.
Scheme | ABCBDEFE CGHGIJAJ DKXKXAAA LMEMDXAX XNINDOAO LPXPDQAQ XRHRESAS ATFTUVAV FWIWUXAX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101010100010101 101011010101 10101101110101010 10110101110101 11111010010010 1011011111 1010111101010 111110101110100 1011011110101 101110101011111 1010011010101010 111010101011101 101111011111110 01110101110111 101011100010101 111001101110111 1011101010100010 100011010001 111010101100010 11010101011101 101010101110111 111110111110101 1010101000010101 00100101110111 010101010101111 101001101110101 010101010100110 0110010010111 001110111111010 101010101110011 101010100010101 11100100010010 10101101101010 101011111110101 111111111101010 11011101011101 1011101010101 111010101010101 101011100010101 01010101111111 1011101110100011 011001101110101 0111101010101110 10100100111111 1010111010100010 101110101010101 101001100010101 101110010011 00101111010 101011101110111 0101101100010 101111101110111 101111101101010 101110101111111 101001100010101 101011101111101 1011111010111010 101110101010101 0010101111111010 101010101111101 101010101010010 101010100011101 101010100010101 01010111110101 1100111011111010 001110100010011 001011110101110 101011100111111 1010101111111010 101010101010101 111011100010101 001110100010001 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 4,499 |
Words | 806 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 50 |
Words per line (avg) | 11 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 401 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 89 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 19, 2023
- 4:02 min read
- 138 Views
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"The Valley of the Shadow" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10073/the-valley-of-the-shadow>.
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