Analysis of Immortal love, forever full

John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)



Immortal love, forever full,
Forever flowing free,
Forever shared, forever whole,
A never ebbing sea!

Our outward lips confess the name
All other names above;
Love only knoweth whence it came,
And comprehendeth love.

Blow, winds of God, awake and blow
The mists of earth away:
Shine out, O Light divine, and show
How wide and far we stray.

We may not climb the heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ down;
In vain we search the lowest deeps,
For Him no depths can drown.

But warm, sweet, tender, even yet,
A present help is He;
And faith still has its Olivet,
And love its Galilee.

The healing of His seamless dress
Is by our beds of pain;
We touch Him in life’s throng and press,
And we are whole again.

Through Him the first fond prayers are said
Our lips of childhood frame,
The last low whispers of our dead
Are burdened with His Name.

O Lord and Master of us all,
Whate’er our name or sign,
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call,
We test our lives by Thine.

The letter fails, the systems fall,
And every symbol wanes;
The Spirit over brooding all,
Eternal Love remains.


Scheme XAXA BCBC DEDE FGFG HAHA FXFX IBIB JKJK JFJF
Poetic Form Quatrain  (89%)
Metre 01010101 010101 01010101 010101 101010101 110101 1101111 011 11110101 011101 11110101 110111 111101001 110111 01110101 111111 11110101 010111 011111 01110 01011101 1110111 11101101 011101 11011111 101111 011101101 110111 11010111 110111 11111111 1110111 01010101 0100101 01010101 010101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,049
Words 202
Sentences 10
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 36
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 92
Words per stanza (avg) 22
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:00 min read
198

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. more…

All John Greenleaf Whittier poems | John Greenleaf Whittier Books

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