Analysis of Santa Filomena. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.
The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.
Honor to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow
Raise us from what is low!
Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp,--
The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.
As if a door in heaven should be
Opened and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,
The light shone and was spent.
On England's annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.
A Lady with a Lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.
Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily, and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Filomena bore.
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEFF GGHH IIXX JJKK LLMM JJNN OOPP QQRR XXSS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (82%) |
Metre | 1010111 11100101 1010101 110101 01011101 01101101 01101 111101 10111111 111010101 01110 111111 11111111 10110101 010101 010101 01010101 0101011 01100 010101 10111100 01010111 1101001 011111 01100111 010100111 01111 0101001 110101011 10011100 010101 011011 11010101 01010101 111111 110101 01010111 001100101 010111 01010 11011101 01010001 010111 10101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,270 |
Words | 247 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 92 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 109 Views
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"Santa Filomena. (Birds Of Passage. Flight The First)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18714/santa-filomena.-%28birds-of-passage.-flight-the-first%29>.
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