Analysis of Carrick-a-Rede, Ireland
Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802 (Chelsea) – 1838 (Cape Coast)
He dwelt amid the gloomy rocks,
A solitary man;
Around his home on every side,
The deep salt waters ran.
The distant ships sailed far away,
And o’er the moaning wave
The sea-birds swept, with pale white wings,
As phantoms haunt the grave:
’Twas dreary on an autumn night,
To hear the tempest sweep,
When gallant ships were perishing
Alone amid the deep.
He was a stranger to that shore,
A stranger he remained,
For to his heart, or hearth, or board,
None ever welcome gained.
Great must have been the misery
Of guilt upon his mind,
That thus could sever all the ties
Between him and his kind.
His step was slow, his words were few,
His brow was worn and wan;
He dwelt among those gloomy rocks,
A solitary man.
The romantic anecdote, to which the above lines have reference, is a true one.—A manuscript journal of a Tour through the Western Islands of Scotland, and along the Northern Coast of Ireland, in 1746, contains the following passage:—
"Carrick-a-Reid is a great rock, cut off from the shore by a chasm of fearful depth, through which the sea, when vexed by angry winds, boileth with great fury. It is resorted to at this season of the year by fishers, for the taking of salmon, who sling themselves across the perilous gulf by means of a stout rope, or withe, as the name Carrick-a-Reid imports. I was told, that, all through the inclemency of last winter, there dwelled here a solitary stranger, of noble mien, in an unseemly hut, made by his own hands. The people, in speaking of the stranger, called him, from his aspect, 'The Man of Sorrow;' and ’tis not unlikely, poor gentleman, he was one of the rebels who fled out of Scotland."
In the second volume of "Wakefield's Ireland," a particular account of Carrick-a-Rede, its fishery, and "very extraordinary flying bridge," may be found.
Scheme | aBxbxcxcxdxd xexexfxfxxaB x x x |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010101 01001 011111001 011101 01011101 010101 01111111 110101 11011101 110101 11010100 010101 11010111 010101 11111111 110101 11110100 110111 11110101 011011 11111101 111101 11011101 01001 001010110011110010110101010110101011000101011100001010010 1001101111101101011011101111101111101101011110101110101011011010101001111011111011001011111110111101110100101101010101111110100101010111110111001101011001111010111110 0010101110000100011100111000100100101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 1,861 |
Words | 329 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 12, 1, 1, 1 |
Lines Amount | 27 |
Letters per line (avg) | 53 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 284 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 64 |
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