Analysis of Coole Park And Ballylee, 1931
Under my window-ledge the waters race,
Otters below and moor-hens on the top,
Run for a mile undimmed in Heaven's face
Then darkening through 'dark' Raftery's 'cellar' drop,
Run underground, rise in a rocky place
In Coole demesne, and there to finish up
Spread to a lake and drop into a hole.
What's water but the generated soul?
Upon the border of that lake's a wood
Now all dry sticks under a wintry sun,
And in a copse of beeches there I stood,
For Nature's pulled her tragic buskin on
And all the rant's a mirror of my mood:
At sudden thunder of the mounting swan
I turned about and looked where branches break
The glittering reaches of the flooded lake.
Another emblem there! That stormy white
But seems a concentration of the sky;
And, like the soul, it sails into the sight
And in the morning's gone, no man knows why;
And is so lovely that it sets to right
What knowledge or its lack had set awry,
So atrogantly pure, a child might think
It can be murdered with a spot of ink.
Sound of a stick upon the floor, a sound
From somebody that toils from chair to chair;
Beloved books that famous hands have bound,
Old marble heads, old pictures everywhere;
Great rooms where travelled men and children found
Content or joy; a last inheritor
Where none has reigned that lacked a name and fame
Or out of folly into folly came.
A spot whereon the founders lived and died
Seemed once more dear than life; ancestral trees,
Or gardens rich in memory glorified
Marriages, alliances and families,
And every bride's ambition satisfied.
Where fashion or mere fantasy decrees
We shift about - all that great glory spent -
Like some poor Arab tribesman and his tent.
We were the last romantics - chose for theme
Traditional sanctity and loveliness;
Whatever's written in what poets name
The book of the people; whatever most can bless
The mind of man or elevate a rhyme;
But all is changed, that high horse riderless,
Though mounted in that saddle Homer rode
Where the swan drifts upon a darkening flood.
Scheme | ABABAXCC DXDEXEFF GHGHGHII JKJKJXLL MNMNMNOO XALXXAXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011010101 1001011101 110110101 1100111101 110100101 011011101 1101010101 110101001 0101011101 1111100101 000111111 110101011 0101010111 1101010101 1101011101 01001010101 0101011101 110010101 0101110101 0001011111 0111011111 1101111101 1110111 1111010111 1101010101 110111111 011110111 110111010 1111010101 1011010100 1111110101 1111001101 011010101 1111110101 1101010010 10001000100 0100101010 1101110001 1101111101 1111010011 1001010111 010010001 101001101 01101010111 011111001 11111111 1100110101 10110101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,955 |
Words | 362 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 263 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 60 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 1:51 min read
- 142 Views
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"Coole Park And Ballylee, 1931" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39307/coole-park-and-ballylee%2C-1931>.
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