Analysis of For Fasting Days

Muriel Stuart 1885 – 1967



Are you my songs, importunate of praise?
Be still, remember for your comforting
That sweeter birds have had less leave to sing
Before men piped them from their lonely ways.

Greener leaves than yours are lost in every spring
Rubies far redder thrust your eager rays
Into the blindfold dark for many days
Before men chose them for a finger-ring.

Sing as you dare, not as men choose, receive not
The passing fashion's prize, for dole or due-
Men's summer-sweet unrecognition-grieve not:
Oh, stoop not to them! Better far that you
Should go unsung than sing as you believe not,
Should go uncrowned than to yourselves untrue.


Scheme ABBA BAAB CDCDCD
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111 1101011100 1101111111 0111111101 101111101001 1011011101 010111101 0111110101 11111111011 0101011111 1101111 1111110111 11011111011 111110101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 615
Words 109
Sentences 6
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 6
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 165
Words per stanza (avg) 36
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

33 sec read
99

Muriel Stuart

Muriel Stuart was The daughter of a Scottish barrister was a poet particularly concerned with the topic of sexual politics though she first wrote poems about World War I She later gave up poetry writing her last work was published in the 1930s She was born Muriel Stuart Irwin She was hailed by Hugh MacDiarmid as the best woman poet of the Scottish Renaissance although she was not Scottish but English Despite this his comment led to her inclusion in many Scottish anthologies Thomas Hardy described her poetry as Superlatively good Her most famous poem In the Orchard is entirely dialogs and in no kind of verse form which makes it innovative for its time She does use rhyme a mixture of half-rhyme and rhyming couplets abab form Other famous poems of hers are The Seed Shop The Fools and Man and his Makers Muriel also wrote a gardening book called Gardeners Nightcap 1938 which was later reprinted by Persephone Books more…

All Muriel Stuart poems | Muriel Stuart Books

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