Analysis of The Drum
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
O the drum!
There is some
Intonation in thy grum
Monotony of utterance that strikes the spirit dumb,
As we hear
Through the clear
And unclouded atmosphere,
Thy palpitating syllables roll in upon the car!
There's a part
Of the art
Of thy music-throbbing heart
That thrills a something in us that awakens with a start,
And in rhyme
With the chime
And exactitude of time,
Goes marching on to glory to thy melody sublime.
And the guest
Of the breast
That thy rolling robs of rest
Is a patriotic spirit as a Continental dressed;
And he looms
From the glooms
Of a century of tombs,
And the blood he spilled at Lexington in living beauty blooms.
And his eyes
Wear the guise
Of a purpose pure and wise,
As the love of them is lifted to a something in the skies
That is bright
Red and white,
With a blur of starry light,
As it laughs in silken ripples to the breezes day and night.
There are deep
Hushes creep
O'er the pulses as they leap,
As thy tumult, fainter growing, on the silence falls asleep,
While the prayer
Rising there
Wills the sea and earth and air
As a heritage to Freedom's sons and daughters everywhere.
Then, with sound
As profound
As the thunderings resound,
Come thy wild reverberations in a throe that shakes the ground,
And a cry
Flung on high,
Like the flag it flutters by,
Wings rapturously upward till it nestles in the sky.
O the drum!
There is some
Intonation in thy grum
Monotony of utterance that strikes the spirit dumb,
As we hear
Through the clear
And unclouded atmosphere,
Thy palpitating syllables roll in upon the ear!
Scheme | AAAABCCx ddddeeee ffffgggg hhhhiiii jjjjkkkk llllmmmm AAAABCCb |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101 111 0010011 01001100110101 111 101 0110 11000100100101 101 101 1110101 11010011010101 001 101 001011 11011101110001 001 101 1110111 1001010100101 011 101 1010011 001111100010101 011 101 1010101 101111101010001 111 101 1011101 111010101010101 111 11 10010111 111010101010101 101 101 1010101 10100110101010 111 101 1011 11100100011101 001 111 1011101 11101110001 101 111 0010011 01001100110101 111 101 0110 11000100100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,497 |
Words | 286 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 56 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 175 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 41 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:26 min read
- 64 Views
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"The Drum" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/21053/the-drum>.
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