Analysis of Thorgerda
LO, what a golden day it is!
The glad sun rives the sapphire deeps
Down to the dim pearl-floor’d abyss
Where, cold in death, my lover sleeps;
Crowns with soft fire his sea-drench’d hair,
Kisses with gold his lips death-pale,
Lets down from heaven a golden stair,
Whose steps methinks his soul doth scale.
This is my treasure. White and sweet,
He lies beneath my ardent eyne,
With heart that nevermore shall beat,
Nor lips press softly against mine.
How like a dream it seems to me,
The time when hand in hand we went
By hill and valley, I and he,
Lost in a trance of ravishment!
I and my lover here that lies
And sleeps the everlasting sleep,
We walk’d whilere in Paradise;
(Can it be true?) Our souls drank deep
Together of Love’s wonder-wine:
We saw the golden days go by,
Unheeding, for we were divine;
Love had advanced us to the sky.
And of that time no traces bin,
Save the still shape that once did hold
My lover’s soul, that shone therein,
As wine laughs in a vase of gold.
Cold, cold he lies, and answers not
Unto my speech; his mouth is cold
Whose kiss to mine was sweet and hot
As sunshine to a marigold.
And yet his pallid lips I press;
I fold his neck in my embrace;
I rain down kisses none the less
Upon his unresponsive face:
I call on him with all the fair
Flower-names that blossom out of love;
I knit sea-jewels in his hair;
I weave fair coronals above
The cold, sweet silver of his brow:
For this is all of him I have;
Nor any Future more than now
Shall give me back what Love once gave.
For from Death’s gate our lives divide;
His was the Galilean’s faith:
With those that serve the Crucified,
He shar’d the chance of Life and Death.
And so my eyes shall never light
Upon his star-soft eyes again;
Nor ever in the day or night,
By hill or valley, wood or plain,
Our hands shall meet afresh. His voice
Shall never with its silver tone
The sadness of my soul rejoice,
Nor his breast throb against my own.
His sight shall never unto me
Return whilst heaven and earth remain:
Though Time blend with Eternity,
Our lives shall never meet again,—
Never by gray or purple sea,
Never again in heavens of blue,
Never in this old earth—ah me!
Never, ah never! in the new.
For me, he treads the windless ways
Among the thick star-diamonds,
Where in the middle æther blaze
The Golden City’s pearl gate-fronds;
Sitteth, palm-crown’d and silver-shod,
Where in strange dwellings of the skies
The Christians to their Woman-God
Cease nevermore from psalmodies.
And I, I wait, with haggard eyes
And face grown awful for desire,
The coming of that fierce day’s rise
When from the cities of the fire
The Wolf shall come with blazing crest,
And many a giant arm’d for war;
When from the sanguine-streaming West,
Hell-flaming, speedeth Naglfar.
Scheme | AAXX BCBC DEDE FXFD GHXH EIEI EJEJ KJKJ LMLM BNBN XXEX OXOX PEPE QEQE FEFE FXFE RXRX SGSA GTGT UXUB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (70%) Etheree (33%) |
Metre | 11010111 011101001 11011101 11011101 111101111 10111111 111100101 1111111 11110101 11011101 1111011 11110011 11011111 01110111 11010101 100111 10110111 0100101 111010 111110111 01011101 11010111 111001 11011101 01111101 10111111 11011101 11100111 11110101 10111111 11111101 111010 01110111 11110101 11110101 0110101 11111101 101110111 11110011 111101 01110111 11111111 11010111 11111111 111110101 11011 1111010 11011101 01111101 01111101 11000111 11110111 101110111 11011101 01011101 11110111 11110101 011100101 11110100 101110101 10111101 100101011 10011111 10110001 1111011 0101110 1001011 0101111 1110101 10110101 01011101 11011 01111101 011101010 01011111 110101010 01111101 010010111 11010101 11011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,899 |
Words | 511 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 20 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 80 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 106 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 17, 2023
- 2:33 min read
- 79 Views
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"Thorgerda" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/23327/thorgerda>.
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