Analysis of To A Southern Statesman
John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)
IS this thy voice whose treble notes of fear
Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,
Actæon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,
Spurning the leash, and leaping o'er their bounds?
Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand,
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack,
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,
Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back,
These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery's track?
Where's now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue,
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o' the Senate flung,
O'er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,
Like Satan's triumph at the fall of man?
How stood'st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,
Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting,
Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star!
The Fates are just; they give us but our own;
Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
There is an Eastern story, not unknown,
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill
Called demons up his water-jars to fill;
Defty and silently, they did his will,
But, when the task was done, kept pouring still.
In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought,
Faster and faster were the buckets brought,
Higher and higher rose the flood around,
Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned!
So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,
For God still overrules man's schemes, and takes
Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes
The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,
That the roused spirits of Democracy
May leave to freer States the same wide door
Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in,
From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin,
Of the stormed city and the ghastly plain,
Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain,
The myriad-handed pioneer may pour,
And the wild West with the roused North combine
And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.
Scheme | ABCCDEDEEFFGGHIHIJJJKKKKLLMMNOONNPQQRRPSS |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111110111 1001011111 111011111 10010101011 1101011101 110110101 1111000101 1111111001 111111111 11011101101 110100110101 100111101 111010111 111111111010 01010101001 11111011010 1011011111 01111111101 1001110111 1111010101 1011111101 1101110111 101001111 1101111101 0111010101 1001000101 1001010101 101111011101 1010011111 111101101 10111101 0111111111 1011010100 1111010111 1111110100 11010100101 1011000101 1111011101 0100100111 0011101110 010101110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,847 |
Words | 335 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 41 |
Lines Amount | 41 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,468 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 333 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:42 min read
- 124 Views
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"To A Southern Statesman" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/23242/to-a-southern-statesman>.
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