Analysis of Chorus of the Dead
Count Giacomo Leopardi 1798 (Recanati) – 1837 (Naples)
And all returns to Thee, alone eternal,
And all Thee returning.
Oh Death, in Thy vast shadow,
Simple and bare we languish,
Not happy, but from the anguish
Of life at last set free. The night profoundly
Falls on the shaken spirit,
And dark in dark confuses;
The withered soul sourage and hope refuses;
Spent and uncaring,
Free now from sorrow and from fear for ever,
We lie here undespairing
Through void eternity.
We lived... And as a phantom from a dream of terror
Wanders into the day,
And draws across the speechless souls of children
A memory and a fear,
We, as we linger here,
Are haunted still by life: but fears of children
Haunt us not now. What were we?
What was that bitter point in time
That bore the name of life?
Mysterious, stupendous,
Lost in our thought that hidden country lies:
As in our day of life there lay
The secret land of death. And as from dying
Our living souls drew back, so now they draw
Back from the flame of life,
Simple and bare to languish,
Not happy, but not in anguish;
For happiness we know
Fate upon life or death will not bestow.
Scheme | ABCDDEFGHBIBEIJKLMKENOPQJBRODDCC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01011101010 011010 110111 1001110 11011010 11111101010 1101010 0101010 0101101010 10010 11110011110 1111 110100 1101010101110 100101 01010101110 0100001 111101 11011111110 1111101 11110101 110111 0100010 10101110101 101011111 01011101110 10101111111 110111 1001110 11011010 110011 1011111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,045 |
Words | 202 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 32 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 834 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 200 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:00 min read
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