Analysis of Meditations Upon An Egg
John Bunyan 1628 (Elstow, Bedfordshire) – 1688 (London)
The egg's no chick by falling from the hen;
Nor man a Christian, till he's born again.
The egg's at first contained in the shell;
Men, afore grace, in sins and darkness dwell.
The egg, when laid, by warmth is made a chicken,
And Christ, by grace, those dead in sin doth quicken.
The egg, when first a chick, the shell's its prison;
So's flesh to the soul, who yet with Christ is risen.
The shell doth crack, the chick doth chirp and peep,
The flesh decays, as men do pray and weep.
The shell doth break, the chick's at liberty,
The flesh falls off, the soul mounts up on high
But both do not enjoy the self-same plight;
The soul is safe, the chick now fears the kite.
But chicks from rotten eggs do not proceed,
Nor is a hypocrite a saint indeed.
The rotten egg, though underneath the hen,
If crack'd, stinks, and is loathsome unto men.
Nor doth her warmth make what is rotten sound;
What's rotten, rotten will at last be found.
The hypocrite, sin has him in possession,
He is a rotten egg under profession.
Some eggs bring cockatrices; and some men
Seem hatch'd and brooded in the viper's den.
Some eggs bring wild-fowls; and some men there be
As wild as are the wildest fowls that flee.
Some eggs bring spiders, and some men appear
More venom'd than the worst of spiders are.[16]
Some eggs bring piss-ants, and some seem to me
As much for trifles as the piss-ants be.
Thus divers eggs do produce divers shapes,
As like some men as monkeys are like apes.
But this is but an egg, were it a chick,
Here had been legs, and wings, and bones to pick.
Scheme | AABBCCCCDDEXFF GGAAHHCC AAEEIIEEJJKK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111110101 1101011101 011101001 111010101 01111111010 01111101110 01110101110 111011111110 0111011101 0101111101 0111011100 0111011111 1111010111 0111011101 1111011101 110100101 010110101 1110110101 1101111101 1101011111 0101110010 11010110010 1111011 110100011 1111101111 1111010111 1111001101 111011101 1111101111 1111010111 1101101101 1111110111 1111110101 1111010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,527 |
Words | 298 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 14, 8, 12 |
Lines Amount | 34 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 395 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 97 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:32 min read
- 130 Views
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"Meditations Upon An Egg" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22124/meditations-upon-an-egg>.
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