Analysis of Newark Abbey
Thomas Love Peacock 1785 (Weymouth, Dorset) – 1866
August, 1842
with a remembrance of August, 1807
I gaze, where August's sunbeam falls
Along these grey and lonely walls,
Till in its light absorbed appears
The lapse of five-and-thirty years.
If change there be, I trace it not
In all this consecrated spot:
No new imprint of Ruin's march
On roofless wall and frameless arch:
The hilss, the woods, the fields, the stream,
Are basking in the self-same beam:
The fall, that turns the unseen mill
As then it murmured, murmurs still:
It seems, as if in one were cast
The present and the imaged past,
Spanning, as with bridge sublime,
That awful lapse of human time,
That gulph, unfathomably spread
Between the living and the dead.
For all too well my spirit feels
The only change this place reveals:
The sunbeams play, the breezes stir,
Unseen, unfelt, unheard by her,
Who, on that long-past August day,
First saw with me those ruins grey.
Whatever span the fates allow,
Ere I shall be as she is now,
Still in my bosom's inmost cell
Shall that deep-treasured memory dwell:
That, more than language can express,
Pure miracle of loveliness,
Whose voice so sweet, whose eyes so bright,
Were my soul's music, and its light,
In those blest days, when life was new,
And hope was false, but love was true.
Scheme | AA BBCC DDEEFFGGHHIIJJ KKLLMM NNOOXBPPQQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10 10010110 1111011 01110101 10110101 01110101 11111111 0111001 1101111 111011 01010101 11000111 01110011 11110101 11110101 0100011 1011101 11011101 1111 01010001 11111101 01011101 0110101 0110110 11111101 11111101 1010101 11111111 101111 111101001 11110101 110011 11111111 01110011 01111111 01111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,215 |
Words | 222 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 4, 14, 6, 10 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 194 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 44 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:07 min read
- 116 Views
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"Newark Abbey" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36752/newark-abbey>.
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