Analysis of Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa
Hilaire Belloc 1870 (La Celle-Saint-Cloud) – 1953
Lady and Queen and Mystery manifold
And very Regent of the untroubled sky,
Whom in a dream St. Hilda did behold
And heard a woodland music passing by:
You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.
Steep are the seas and savaging and cold
In broken waters terrible to try;
And vast against the winter night the wold,
And harbourless for any sail to lie.
But you shall lead me to the lights, and I
Shall hymn you in a harbour story told.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.
Help of the half-defeated, House of gold,
Shrine of the Sword, and Tower of Ivory;
Splendour apart, supreme and aureoled,
The Battler's vision and the World's reply.
You shall restore me, O my last Ally,
To vengence and the glories of the bold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.
Prince of the degradations, bought and sold,
These verses, written in your crumbling sty,
Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold
And publish that in which I mean to die.
Scheme | ababbaAB ababbaAB axabbaAB abab |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1001010010 01010100101 1001110101 010110101 1101110111 1100010101 1101111101 0111011111 1101010001 0101010011 0101010101 01110111 1111110101 1110010101 1101111101 0111011111 1101010111 11010101100 1010101 011000101 1101111110 110010101 1101111101 0111011111 110010101 11010011001 0101111101 0101011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,150 |
Words | 233 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 225 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 57 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 13, 2023
- 1:10 min read
- 149 Views
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"Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/19175/ballade-to-our-lady-of-czestochowa>.
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