Analysis of The Swallows
Augusta Davies Webster 1837 (Poole, Dorset) – 1894
AH! swallows, is it so?
Did loving lingering summer, whose slow pace
Tarried among late blossoms, loth to go,
Gather the darkening cloud-wraps round her face
And weep herself away in last week's rain?
Can no new sunlight waken her again?
'Yes,' one pale rose a-blow
Has answered from the trellised lane;
The flickering swallows answer 'No.'
From out the dim grey sky
The arrowy swarm breaks forth and specks the air,
While, one by one, birds wheel and float and fly,
And now are gone, then suddenly are there;
Till lo, the heavens are empty of them all.
Oh, fly, fly south, from leaves that fade and fall,
From shivering flowers that die;
Free swallows, fly from winter's thrall,
Ye who can give the gloom good-bye.
But what for us who stay
To hear the winds and watch the boughs grow black,
And in the soddened mornings, day by day,
Count what lost sweets bestrew the nightly track
Of frost-foot winter trampling towards his throne?
Swallows, who have the sunlight for your own,
Fly on your sunward way;
For you has January buds new blown,
For us the snows and gloom and grey.
On, on, beyond our reach,
Swallows, with but your longing for a guide:
Let the hills rise, let the waves tear the beach,
Ye will not balk your course nor turn aside,
But find the palms and twitter in the sun.
And well for them whose eager wings have won
The longed for goal of flight;
But what of them in twilights dun
Who long, but have no wings for flight?
Scheme | ABABCXACA DEDEFFDFD GHGHIIGIG JKJKLLMLM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111 11010010111 101110111 10010011101 0101010111 111110001 111101 1101011 010010101 110111 011110101 1111110101 0111110011 11010110111 1111111101 11001011 11011101 11110111 111111 1101010111 000110111 111110101 11110100111 101101111 111101 111100111 11010101 1101101 1011110101 1011101101 1111111101 1101010001 0111110111 011111 1111011 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,411 |
Words | 269 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 9, 9 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 279 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 66 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:20 min read
- 64 Views
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"The Swallows" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4126/the-swallows>.
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