Analysis of The Peace Of Europe
John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)
'GREAT peace in Europe! Order reigns
From Tiber's hills to Danube's plains!'
So say her kings and priests; so say
The lying prophets of our day.
Go lay to earth a listening ear;
The tramp of measured marches hear;
The rolling of the cannon's wheel,
The shotted musket's murderous peal,
The night alarm, the sentry's call,
The quick-eared spy in hut and hall!
From Polar sea and tropic fen
The dying-groans of exiled men!
The bolted cell, the galley's chains,
The scaffold smoking with its stains!
Order, the hush of brooding slaves!
Peace, in the dungeon-vaults and graves!
O Fisher! of the world-wide net,
With meshes in all waters set,
Whose fabled keys of heaven and hell
Bolt hard the patriot's prison-cell,
And open wide the banquet-hall,
Where kings and priests hold carnival!
Weak vassal tricked in royal guise,
Boy Kaiser with thy lip of lies;
Base gambler for Napoleon's crown,
Barnacle on his dead renown!
Thou, Bourbon Neapolitan,
Crowned scandal, loathed of God and man;
And thou, fell Spider of the North!
Stretching thy giant feelers forth,
Within whose web the freedom dies
Of nations eaten up like flies!
Speak, Prince and Kaiser, Priest and Czar!
If this be Peace, pray what is War?
White Angel of the Lord! unmeet
That soft accursed for thy pure feet.
Never in Slavery's desert flows
The fountain of thy charmed repose;
No tyrant's hand thy chaplet weaves
Of lilies and of olive-leaves;
Not with the wicked shalt thou dwell,
Thus saith the Eternal Oracle;
Thy home is with the pure and free!
Stern herald of thy better day,
Before thee, to prepare thy way,
The Baptist Shade of Liberty,
Gray, scarred and hairy-robed, must press
With bleeding feet the wilderness!
Oh that its voice might pierce the ear
Of princes, trembling while they hear
A cry as of the Hebrew seer:
Repent! God's kingdom draweth near!
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFAAGGHHIIEJKKLLMNOOKKPQHRSSTTIJUBBUVWCCCX |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010101 111111 11010111 010101101 111101001 01110101 01010101 0111001 0101011 01110101 11010101 0101111 0101011 01010111 10011101 10010101 11010111 11001101 110111001 110100101 01010101 11011100 11010101 11011111 110101001 10011101 1100100 11011101 01110101 10110101 01110101 11010111 11010101 11111111 1101011 1111111 1001101 01011101 111111 11001101 11010111 110010100 11110101 11011101 01110111 01011100 11010111 11010100 11111101 110100111 01110101 0111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,780 |
Words | 317 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 52 |
Lines Amount | 52 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,429 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 314 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:38 min read
- 86 Views
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"The Peace Of Europe" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/23163/the-peace-of-europe>.
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