Analysis of ‘He came unto His own, and His own received Him not’
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge 1861 (London) – 1907
As Christ the Lord was passing by,
He came, one night, to a cottage door.
He came, a poor man, to the poor;
He had no bed whereon to lie.
He asked in vain for a crust of bread,
Standing there in the frozen blast.
The door was locked and bolted fast.
‘Only a beggar!’ the poor man said.
Christ the Lord went further on,
Until He came to a palace gate.
There a king was keeping his state,
In every window the candles shone.
The king beheld Him out in the cold.
He left his guests in the banquet-hall.
He bade his servants tend them all.
‘I wait on a Guest I know of old.’
‘’Tis only a beggar-man!’ they said.
‘Yes,’ he said; ‘it is Christ the Lord.’
He spoke to Him a kindly word,
He gave Him wine and he gave Him bread.
Now Christ is Lord of Heaven and Hell,
And all the words of Christ are true.
He touched the cottage, and it grew;
He touched the palace, and it fell.
The poor man is become a king.
Never was man so sad as he.
Sorrow and Sin on the throne make three,
He has no joy in mortal thing.
But the sun streams in at the cottage door
That stands where once the palace stood.
And the workman, toiling to earn his food,
Was never a king before.
Scheme | ABXA CDDC XEEX FGGF CXXC HIIH JKKJ BXXB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (50%) |
Metre | 11011101 111110101 11011101 1111111 110110111 10100101 01110101 100100111 1011101 011110101 10111011 0100100101 01111001 111100101 11110111 111011111 110010111 11111101 11110101 111101111 111111001 01011111 11010011 11010011 01110101 10111111 100110111 11110101 1011010101 11110101 0010101111 1100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,278 |
Words | 241 |
Sentences | 24 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 29 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 59 Views
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"‘He came unto His own, and His own received Him not’" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/26858/%E2%80%98he-came-unto-his-own%2C-and-his-own-received-him-not%E2%80%99>.
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