Analysis of Mists In Autumn

James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)



Now, by the cool, declining year condescend,
Descend the copious exhalations, check'd,
As up the middle sky unseen they stole,
And roll the doubling fogs around the hill.
No more the mountain, horrid, vast, sublime,
Who pours a sweep of rivers from his sides,
And high between contending kingdoms rears
The rocky long division, fills the view
With great variety; but in a night
Of gath'ring vapour from the baffled sense
Sinks dark and dreary; thence expanding far,
The huge dusk gradual swallows up the plain:
Vanish the woods; the dim-seen river seems
Sullen and slow to roll the misty wave.
Ev'n in the height of noon, oppress'd, the sun
Sheds weak and blunt his wide-refracted ray,
Whence glaring oft with many a broaden'd orb
He frights the nations. Indistinct on earth,
Seen through the turbid air, beyond the life
Objects appear, and, wilder'd o'er the waste,
The shepherd stalks gigantic: till at last,
Wreath'd dun around in deeper circles, still
Successive closing, sits the gen'ral fog
Unbounded o'er the world, and, mingling thick,
A formless gray confusion covers all.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUDVWX
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 1101010101 01010011 1101010111 01010010101 1101010101 1101110111 0101010101 0101010101 1101001001 111110101 1101010101 01110010101 1001011101 1001110101 11001110101 11011111 11011100101 1101000111 110110101 1001011001 0101010111 1101010101 010101011 010100101001 011010101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,066
Words 182
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 25
Lines Amount 25
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 854
Words per stanza (avg) 180
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

57 sec read
28

James Thomson

James Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian-era poet famous primarily for the long poem The City of Dreadful Night, an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment. more…

All James Thomson poems | James Thomson Books

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