Analysis of Hermes Trismegistus
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Still through Egypt's desert places
Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.
But where are the old Egyptian
Demi-gods and kings?
Nothing left but an inscription
Graven on stones and rings.
Where are Helios and Hephaestus,
Gods of eldest eld?
Where is Hermes Trismegistus,
Who their secrets held?
Where are now the many hundred
Thousand books he wrote?
By the Thaumaturgists plundered,
Lost in lands remote;
In oblivion sunk forever,
As when o'er the land
Blows a storm-wind, in the river
Sinks the scattered sand.
Something unsubstantial, ghostly,
Seems this Theurgist,
In deep meditation mostly
Wrapped, as in a mist.
Vague, phantasmal, and unreal
To our thought he seems,
Walking in a world ideal,
In a land of dreams.
Was he one, or many, merging
Name and fame in one,
Like a stream, to which, converging
Many streamlets run?
Till, with gathered power proceeding,
Ampler sweep it takes,
Downward the sweet waters leading
From unnumbered lakes.
By the Nile I see him wandering,
Pausing now and then,
On the mystic union pondering
Between gods and men;
Half believing, wholly feeling,
With supreme delight,
How the gods, themselves concealing,
Lift men to their height.
Or in Thebes, the hundred-gated,
In the thoroughfare
Breathing, as if consecrated,
A diviner air;
And amid discordant noises,
In the jostling throng,
Hearing far, celestial voices
Of Olympian song.
Who shall call his dreams fallacious?
Who has searched or sought
All the unexplored and spacious
Universe of thought?
Who, in his own skill confiding,
Shall with rule and line
Mark the border-land dividing
Human and divine?
Trismegistus! three times greatest!
How thy name sublime
Has descended to this latest
Progeny of time!
Happy they whose written pages
Perish with their lives,
If amid the crumbling ages
Still their name survives!
Thine, O priest of Egypt, lately
Found I in the vast,
Weed-encumbered sombre, stately,
Grave-yard of the Past;
And a presence moved before me
On that gloomy shore,
As a waft of wind, that o'er me
Breathed, and was no more.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFAGAG GGGGHGHG IGIGJKJK LELELMLM LNLNLGLG GOGOXPAP CGCGLQLQ GRGRAXAX IGIGISIS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (31%) Etheree (30%) |
Metre | 11101010 1011 11101110 11101 101000100 10101 001110100 10101 11101010 10101 10111010 101101 111001 11101 11101 11101 11101010 10111 10110 10101 001001010 111001 10110010 10101 10110 111 0101010 11001 11001 110111 1000101 00111 11111010 10101 10111010 1011 111010010 1111 10011010 111 101111100 10101 101010100 01101 10101010 10101 10101010 11111 10101010 0010 1011100 011 00101010 001001 10101010 101001 11111010 11111 1001010 1011 10111010 11101 10101010 10001 11110 11101 10101110 10011 10111010 10111 101010010 11101 11111010 11001 1010110 11101 00101011 11101 101111101 10111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 2,126 |
Words | 362 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 80 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 174 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 23, 2023
- 1:49 min read
- 208 Views
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"Hermes Trismegistus" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18619/hermes-trismegistus>.
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