Analysis of Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. The Musician's Tale; The Saga of King Olaf XII. -- King Olaf's Christmas
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 (Portland) – 1882 (Cambridge)
At Drontheim, Olaf the King
Heard the bells of Yule-tide ring,
As he sat in his banquet-hall,
Drinking the nut-brown ale,
With his bearded Berserks hale
And tall.
Three days his Yule-tide feasts
He held with Bishops and Priests,
And his horn filled up to the brim;
But the ale was never too strong,
Nor the Saga-man's tale too long,
For him.
O'er his drinking-horn, the sign
He made of the cross divine,
As he drank, and muttered his prayers;
But the Berserks evermore
Made the sign of the Hammer of Thor
Over theirs.
The gleams of the fire-light dance
Upon helmet and hauberk and lance,
And laugh in the eyes of the King;
And he cries to Halfred the Scald,
Gray-bearded, wrinkled, and bald,
'Sing!'
'Sing me a song divine,
With a sword in every line,
And this shall be thy reward.'
And he loosened the belt at his waist,
And in front of the singer placed
His sword.
'Quern-biter of Hakon the Good,
Wherewith at a stroke he hewed
The millstone through and through,
And Foot-breadth of Thoralf the Strong,
Were neither so broad nor so long,
Nor so true.'
Then the Scald took his harp and sang,
And loud through the music rang
The sound of that shining word;
And the harp-strings a clangor made,
As if they were struck with the blade
Of a sword.
And the Berserks round about
Broke forth into a shout
That made the rafters ring:
They smote with their fists on the board,
And shouted, 'Long live the Sword,
And the King!'
But the King said, 'O my son,
I miss the bright word in one
Of thy measures and thy rhymes.'
And Halfred the Scald replied,
'In another 't was multiplied
Three times.'
Then King Olaf raised the hilt
Of iron, cross-shaped and gilt,
And said, 'Do not refuse;
Count well the gain and the loss,
Thor's hammer or Christ's cross:
Choose!'
And Halfred the Scald said, 'This
In the name of the Lord I kiss,
Who on it was crucified!'
And a shout went round the board,
'In the name of Christ the Lord,
Who died!'
Then over the waste of snows
The noonday sun uprose,
Through the driving mists revealed,
Like the lifting of the Host,
By incense-clouds almost
Concealed.
On the shining wall a vast
And shadowy cross was cast
From the hilt of the lifted sword,
And in foaming cups of ale
The Berserks drank 'Was-hael!
To the Lord!'
Scheme | AABCCB DDEFFE GGHIIH JJAKKA GGLMML XKNFFN OOXPPL QQALLA RRSTTS UUVWWV XXTLLT XDYZZY 1 1 LCBL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111001 1011111 11101101 100111 111011 01 111111 1111001 01111101 10111011 10101111 11 10110101 1110101 11101011 10110 101101011 101 01101011 01100101 01001101 0111101 1101001 1 110101 10101001 0111101 011001111 00110101 11 11011001 110111 01101 0111101 01011111 111 10111101 0110101 0111101 0011011 11101101 101 001101 110101 110101 11111101 0101101 001 1011111 1101101 1110011 010101 00101110 11 1110101 1101101 011101 1101001 110111 1 010111 00110111 111110 0011101 0011101 11 1100111 0111 1010101 1010101 10111 01 1010101 0100111 10110101 0010111 01111 101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 2,178 |
Words | 425 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 78 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 132 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:05 min read
- 90 Views
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"Tales Of A Wayside Inn : Part 1. The Musician's Tale; The Saga of King Olaf XII. -- King Olaf's Christmas" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18758/tales-of-a-wayside-inn-%3A-part-1.-the-musician%27s-tale%3B-the-saga-of-king-olaf-xii.----king-olaf%27s-christmas>.
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