Analysis of Discoverer Of The North Cape. A Leaf From King Alfred's Orosius. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Othere, the old sea-captain,
Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth,
Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth,
Which he held in his brown right hand.
His figure was tall and stately,
Like a boy's his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay,
But threads of a silvery gray
Gleamed in his tawny beard.
Hearty and hale was Othere,
His cheek had the color of oak;
With a kind of laugh in his speech,
Like the sea-tide on a beach,
As unto the King he spoke.
And Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Had a book upon his knees,
And wrote down the wondrous tale
Of him who was first to sail
Into the Arctic seas.
'So far I live to the northward,
No man lives north of me;
To the east are wild mountain-chains;
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.
'So far I live to the northward,
From the harbor of Skeringes-hale,
If you only sailed by day,
With a fair wind all the way,
More than a month would you sail.
'I own six hundred reindeer,
With sheep and swine beside;
I have tribute from the Finns,
Whalebone and reindeer-skins,
And ropes of walrus-hide.
'I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then,
With their sagas of the seas;--
'Of Iceland and of Greenland,
And the stormy Hebrides,
And the undiscovered deep;--
Oh I could not eat nor sleep
For thinking of those seas.
'To the northward stretched the desert,
How far I fain would know;
So at last I sallied forth,
And three days sailed due north,
As far as the whale-ships go.
'To the west of me was the ocean,
To the right the desolate shore,
But I did not slacken sail
For the walrus or the whale,
Till after three days more.
'The days grew longer and longer,
Till they became as one,
And northward through the haze
I saw the sullen blaze
Of the red midnight sun.
'And then uprose before me,
Upon the water's edge,
The huge and haggard shape
Of that unknown North Cape,
Whose form is like a wedge.
'The sea was rough and stormy,
The tempest howled and wailed,
And the sea-fog, like a ghost,
Haunted that dreary coast,
But onward still I sailed.
'Four days I steered to eastward,
Four days without a night:
Round in a fiery ring
Went the great sun, O King,
With red and lurid light.'
Here Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Ceased writing for a while;
And raised his eyes from his book,
With a strange and puzzled look,
And an incredulous smile.
But Othere, the old sea-captain,
He neither paused nor stirred,
Till the King listened, and then
Once more took up his pen,
And wrote down every word.
'And now the land,' said Othere,
'Bent southward suddenly,
And I followed the curving shore
And ever southward bore
Into a nameless sea.
'And there we hunted the walrus,
The narwhale, and the seal;
Ha! 't was a noble game!
And like the lightning's flame
Flew our harpoons of steel.
'There were six of us all together,
Norsemen of Helgoland;
In two days and no more
We killed of them threescore,
And dragged them to the strand!'
Here Alfred the Truth-Teller
Suddenly closed his book,
And lifted his blue eyes,
With doubt and strange surmise
Depicted in their look.
And Othere the old sea-captain
Stared at him wild and weird,
Then smiled, till his shining teeth
Gleamed white from underneath
His tawny, quivering beard.
And to the King of the Saxons,
In witness of the truth,
Raising his noble head,
He stretched his brown hand, and said,
'Behold this walrus-tooth!'
Scheme | abccb dbeeb fghhg ijkkj Bdlld Bkbek fbmmb xjnnj bjooj bpqqp afkkf farra dstts dbbbb bbuub ivwwv abnnb fdffd xxyyx fbffb fwzzw ab1 1 b icbbc |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101110 1101 111001011 1011101 11101111 11011010 1011101 1111011 11101001 101101 100111 11101011 10111011 1011101 1100111 01011010 1010111 0110101 1111111 010101 11111010 111111 10111101 0011101 1010111 11111010 1010111 1110111 1011101 1101111 111101 110101 1110101 1011 011101 1101110 1111111 10111 111101 1110101 1100110 0010100 000101 1111111 110111 10101010 111111 111111 011111 1110111 101111010 10101001 1111101 1010101 110111 01110010 110111 010101 110101 10111 011011 010101 010101 110111 111101 0111010 010101 0011101 101101 110111 1111110 110101 1001001 101111 110101 11011010 110101 0111111 1010101 0101001 1101110 110111 1011001 111111 0111001 010111 110100 01100101 010101 010101 01110010 01001 1110101 01011 1100111 101111010 1011 011011 11111 011101 1100110 100111 010111 110101 010011 0101110 111101 1111101 11101 1101001 01011010 010101 101101 1111101 011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 3,313 |
Words | 636 |
Sentences | 25 |
Stanzas | 23 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 115 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 114 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:10 min read
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"Discoverer Of The North Cape. A Leaf From King Alfred's Orosius. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18563/discoverer-of-the-north-cape.-a-leaf-from-king-alfred%27s-orosius.-%28birds-of-passage.-flight-the-first%29>.
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