Analysis of A Lay Of Old Time
John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)
One morning of the first sad Fall,
Poor Adam and his bride
Sat in the shade of Eden's wall--
But on the outer side.
She, blushing in her fig-leaf suit
For the chaste garb of old;
He, sighing o'er his bitter fruit
For Eden's drupes of gold.
Behind them, smiling in the morn,
Their forfeit garden lay,
Before them, wild with rock and thorn,
The desert stretched away.
They heard the air above them fanned,
A light step on the sward,
And lo! they saw before them stand
The angel of the Lord!
'Arise,' he said, 'why look behind,
When hope is all before,
And patient hand and willing mind,
Your loss may yet restore?
'I leave with you a spell whose power
Can make the desert glad,
And call around you fruit and flower
As fair as Eden had.
'I clothe your hands with power to lift
The curse from off your soil;
Your very doom shall seem a gift,
Your loss a gain through Toil.
'Go, cheerful as yon humming-bees,
To labor as to play.'
White glimmering over Eden's trees
The angel passed away.
The pilgrims of the world went forth
Obedient to the word,
And found where'er they tilled the earth
A garden of the Lord!
The thorn-tree cast its evil fruit
And blushed with plum and pear,
And seeded grass and trodden root
Grew sweet beneath their care.
We share our primal parents' fate,
And, in our turn and day,
Look back on Eden's sworded gate
As sad and lost as they.
But still for us his native skies
The pitying Angel leaves,
And leads through Toil to Paradise
New Adams and new Eves!
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMN OFOF XXXH CPCP QFQF XRXR |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (92%) |
Metre | 11010111 110011 1001111 110101 11000111 101111 110101101 11111 01110001 110101 01111101 010101 11010111 011101 01110111 010101 01111101 111101 01010101 111101 111101110 110101 010111010 111101 111111011 011111 11011101 110111 11011101 110111 11001011 010101 01010111 0100101 01101101 010101 01111101 011101 01010101 110111 111010101 0010101 111111 110111 11111101 0100101 0111110 110011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,436 |
Words | 282 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 95 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:25 min read
- 67 Views
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