Analysis of Give All To Love

Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803 (Boston) – 1882 (Concord)



Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit, and the Muse,-
Nothing refuse.
'Tis a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But it is a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
It was not for the mean;
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
It will reward,-
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,-
Keep thee today,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture's hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.


Scheme ABCDEEFGHGIJKKLMINOOPQRFPASBFTFUVWXXYHHZYZ
Poetic Form
Metre 1111 0111 1101 0111 110001 1001 10110 1111 101100 1011 1011 11011 1101 0101 11101 1111 001101 111101 11101 1011 1010 1101 1101 1110 010010 1111 1111 111111 11111010 1101 110010 11110 1101 111101 11001 111101 1010101 1010111 111101 1101011 1010111 101010
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 895
Words 172
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 42
Lines Amount 42
Letters per line (avg) 17
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 709
Words per stanza (avg) 167
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

51 sec read
116

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. more…

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