Analysis of Apologia
Oscar Wilde 1854 (Dublin) – 1900 (Paris)
Is it thy will that I should wax and wane,
Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey,
And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain
Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?
Is it thy will Love that I love so well
That my Soul's House should be a tortured spot
Wherein, like evil paramours, must dwell
The quenchless flame, the worm that dieth not?
Nay, if it be thy will I shall endure,
And sell ambition at the common mart,
And let dull failure be my vestiture,
And sorrow dig its grave within my heart.
Perchance it may be better so at least
I have not made my heart a heart of stone,
Nor starved my boyhood of its goodly feast,
Nor walked where Beauty is a thing unknown.
Many a man hath done so; sought to fence
In straitened bonds the soul that should be free,
Trodden the dusty road of common sense,
While all the forest sang of liberty,
Not marking how the spotted hawk in flight
Passed on wide pinion through the lofty air,
To where some steep untrodden mountain height
Caught the last tresses of the Sun God's hair.
Or how the little flower he trod upon,
The daisy, that white-feathered shield of gold,
Followed with wistful eyes the wandering sun
Content if once its leaves were aureoled.
But surely it is something to have been
The best beloved for a little while,
To have walked hand in hand with Love, and seen
His purple wings flit once across thy smile.
Ay! though the gorged asp of passion feed
On my boy's heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
Scheme | ABAB CDCD XEBE FGFG HIHI JKJK XXXD XLXL MNMN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1111111101 101111111 0111011111 1101110101 1111111111 1111110101 01110111 01101111 1111111101 0101010101 01110111 0101110111 0111110111 1111110111 111111101 1111010101 1001111111 011011111 1001011101 1101011100 1101010101 1111010101 11111101 1011010111 11010101101 0101110111 10110101001 10111101 1101110111 010110101 1111011101 1101110111 110111101 1111111101 1111110101 0111010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,539 |
Words | 303 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 135 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on April 10, 2023
- 1:31 min read
- 93 Views
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"Apologia" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/56317/apologia>.
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