Analysis of The Alchemist in the City
Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844 (Stratford, London) – 1889 (Dublin)
My window shews the travelling clouds,
Leaves spent, new seasons, alter'd sky,
The making and the melting crowds:
The whole world passes; I stand by.
They do not waste their meted hours,
But men and masters plan and build:
I see the crowning of their towers,
And happy promises fulfill'd.
And I - perhaps if my intent
Could count on prediluvian age,
The labours I should then have spent
Might so attain their heritage,
But now before the pot can glow
With not to be discover'd gold,
At length the bellows shall not blow,
The furnace shall at last be cold.
Yet it is now too late to heal
The incapable and cumbrous shame
Which makes me when with men I deal
More powerless than the blind or lame.
No, I should love the city less
Even than this my thankless lore;
But I desire the wilderness
Or weeded landslips of the shore.
I walk my breezy belvedere
To watch the low or levant sun,
I see the city pigeons veer,
I mark the tower swallows run
Between the tower-top and the ground
Below me in the bearing air;
Then find in the horizon-round
One spot and hunger to be there.
And then I hate the most that lore
That holds no promise of success;
Then sweetest seems the houseless shore,
Then free and kind the wilderness,
Or ancient mounds that cover bones,
Or rocks where rockdoves do repair
And trees of terebinth and stones
And silence and a gulf of air.
There on a long and squared height
After the sunset I would lie,
And pierce the yellow waxen light
With free long looking, ere I die.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EXEX FGFG HIHI JKLK MNMN OPOP KJKL QPQP RBRB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (82%) |
Metre | 110101001 11110101 01000101 01110111 111111010 11010101 110101110 01010001 01011101 11111 0111111 11011100 11010111 11110101 11010111 01011111 11111111 00100011 11111111 110010111 11110101 10111101 110100100 1101101 1111001 11011011 11010101 11010101 010101001 01100101 11000101 11010111 01110111 11110101 1101011 11010100 11011101 1111101 011101 01000111 1101011 1001111 0101011 11110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,470 |
Words | 280 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 106 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 15, 2023
- 1:24 min read
- 156 Views
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"The Alchemist in the City" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/15887/the-alchemist-in-the-city>.
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