Analysis of The Dead Singer
John Boyle O'Reilly 1844 (Dowth) – 1890 (Boston)
'SHE is dead!' they say; 'she is robed for the grave; O there are lilies upon her breast;
Her mother has kissed her clay-cold lips, and folded her hands to rest;
Her blue eyes show through the waxen lids: they have hidden her hair's gold crown;
Her grave is dug, and its heap of earth is waiting to press her down.'
'She is dead!' they say to the people, her people, for whom she sung;
Whose hearts she touched with sorrow and love, like a harp with life-chords strung.
And the people hear—but behind their tear they smile as though they heard
Another voice, like a mystery, proclaim another word.
'She is not dead.' it says to their hearts; 'true Singers can never die;
Their life is a voice of higher things, unseen to the common eye;
The truths and the beauties are clear to them, God's right and the human wrong,
The heroes who die unknown, and the weak who are chained and scourged by the strong.'
And the people smile at the death-word, for the mystic voice is clear:
'THE SINGER WHO LIVED IS ALWAYS ALIVE: WE HEARKEN AND ALWAYS HEAR!'
And they raise her body with tender hands, and bear her down to the main,
They lay her in state on the mourning ship, like the lily-maid Elaine;
And they sail to her isle across the sea, where the people wait on the shore
To lift her in silence with heads all bare to her home forevermore,
Her home in the heart of her country; oh, a grave among our own
Is warmer and dearer than living on in the stranger lands alone.
No need of a tomb for the Singer! Her fair hair's pillow now
Is the sacred clay of her country, and the sky above her brow
Is the same that smiled and wept on her youth, and the grass around is deep
With the clinging leaves of the shamrock that cover her peaceful sleep.
Undreaming there she will rest and wait, in the tomb her people make,
Till she hears men's hearts, like the seeds in Spring, all stirring to be awake,
Till she feels the moving of souls that strain till the bands around them break;
And then, I think, her dead lips will smile and her eyes be oped to see,
When the cry goes out to the Nations that the Singer's land is free!
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEFFGX HHXGII JJKK LLLMM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111111101111100101 0101101110100111 0111101111100111 0111011111101101 1111110100101111 1111110011011111 0010110111111111 010110100010101 1111111111101101 1110111010110101 01001011111100101 010110100111101101 0010110111010111 01011110111011 01101011010101101 11001101011010101 011101010110101101 11001011111011 01001101010101101 11001011010010101 111011010011101 1010110100010101 10111011010010111 101011011100101 11111010010101 11111101011101101 11101011111010111 0111011110011111 1011110101010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 2,105 |
Words | 411 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 6, 6, 4, 5 |
Lines Amount | 29 |
Letters per line (avg) | 56 |
Words per line (avg) | 14 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 271 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 67 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:03 min read
- 33 Views
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"The Dead Singer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22049/the-dead-singer>.
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