Analysis of Elliot's Oak

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)



Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud
With sounds of unintelligible speech,
Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,
Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;
With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,
Thou speakest a different dialect to each;
To me a language that no man can teach,
Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.
For underneath thy shade, in days remote,
Seated like Abraham at eventide
Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown
Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote
His Bible in a language that hath died
And is forgotten, save by thee alone.


Scheme ABBAABBACADCED
Poetic Form
Metre 11011100111 111010001 111101011 1110101 11010011101 1101001011 1101011111 1011110101 101110101 1011011 010111001 010101001001 1100010111 0101011101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 556
Words 101
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 447
Words per stanza (avg) 99
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 30, 2023

30 sec read
174

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. more…

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