Analysis of Belisarius
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
Justinian the Great.
It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast.
For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
Like dust in a windy street.
For him I won again
The Ausonian realm and reign,
Rome and Parthenope;
And all the land was mine
From the summits of Apennine
To the shores of either sea.
For him, in my feeble age,
I dared the battle's rage,
To save Byzantium's state,
When the tents of Zabergan,
Like snow-drifts overran
The road to the Golden Gate.
And for this, for this, behold!
Infirm and blind and old,
With gray, uncovered head,
Beneath the very arch
Of my triumphal march,
I stand and beg my bread!
Methinks I still can hear,
Sounding distinct and near,
The Vandal monarch's cry,
As, captive and disgraced,
With majestic step he paced,--
"All, all is Vanity!"
Ah! vainest of all things
Is the gratitude of kings;
The plaudits of the crowd
Are but the clatter of feet
At midnight in the street,
Hollow and restless and loud.
But the bitterest disgrace
Is to see forever the face
Of the Monk of Ephesus!
The unconquerable will
This, too, can bear;--I still
Am Belisarius!
Scheme | AABCCB DDEFFE GGHIIH JXXXXK LLBJXB MMGNNG XXXDDK OOPHHP QQIRRI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110101 0111001 110101 010111 1011010 101 111111 01010101 1100101 110111 011110 110111 111111 010111 100011 11011 0100101 1100101 111101 01101 101 010111 1010110 1011101 1101101 110101 1111 10111 111101 0110101 0111101 010101 110101 010101 110101 110111 11111 100101 01011 110001 1010111 111100 11111 101011 010101 1101011 11001 1001001 1010001 11101001 10111 011 111111 11 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,398 |
Words | 270 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 54 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 124 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 29 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 29, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 203 Views
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"Belisarius" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18514/belisarius>.
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