Analysis of The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto V.
Coventry Patmore 1823 (Woodford, London) – 1896 (Lymington)
I The Comparison
Where she succeeds with cloudless brow,
In common and in holy course,
He fails, in spite of prayer and vow
And agonies of faith and force;
Or, if his suit with Heaven prevails
To righteous life, his virtuous deeds
Lack beauty, virtue's badge; she fails
More graciously than he succeeds.
Her spirit, compact of gentleness,
If Heaven postpones or grants her pray'r,
Conceives no pride in its success,
And in its failure no despair;
But his, enamour'd of its hurt,
Baffled, blasphemes, or, not denied,
Crows from the dunghill of desert,
And wags its ugly wings for pride.
He's never young nor ripe; she grows
More infantine, auroral, mild,
And still the more she lives and knows
The lovelier she's express'd a child.
Say that she wants the will of man
To conquer fame, not check'd by cross,
Nor moved when others bless or ban;
She wants but what to have were loss.
Or say she wants the patient brain
To track shy truth; her facile wit
At that which he hunts down with pain
Flies straight, and does exactly hit.
Were she but half of what she is,
He twice himself, mere love alone,
Her special crown, as truth is his,
Gives title to the worthier throne;
For love is substance, truth the form;
Truth without love were less than nought;
But blindest love is sweet and warm,
And full of truth not shaped by thought;
And therefore in herself she stands
Adorn'd with undeficient grace,
Her happy virtues taking hands,
Each smiling in another's face.
So, dancing round the Tree of Life,
They make an Eden in her breast,
While his, disjointed and at strife,
Proud-thoughted, do not bring him rest.
II Love in Tears
If fate Love's dear ambition mar,
And load his breast with hopeless pain,
And seem to blot out sun and star,
Love, won or lost, is countless gain;
His sorrow boasts a secret bliss
Which sorrow of itself beguiles,
And Love in tears too noble is
For pity, save of Love in smiles.
But, looking backward through his tears,
With vision of maturer scope,
How often one dead joy appears
The platform of some better hope!
And, let us own, the sharpest smart
Which human patience may endure
Pays light for that which leaves the heart
More generous, dignified, and pure.
III Prospective Faith
They safely walk in darkest ways
Whose youth is lighted from above,
Where, through the senses' silvery haze,
Dawns the veil'd moon of nuptial love.
Who is the happy husband? He
Who, scanning his unwedded life,
Thanks Heaven, with a conscience free,
'Twas faithful to his future wife.
IV Venus Victrix
Fatal in force, yet gentle in will,
Defeats, from her, are tender pacts,
For, like the kindly lodestone, still
She's drawn herself by what she attracts.
I
I went not to the Dean's unbid:
I would not have my mystery,
From her so delicately hid,
The guess of gossips at their tea.
A long, long week, and not once there,
Had made my spirit sick and faint,
And lack-love, foul as love is fair,
Perverted all things to complaint.
How vain the world had grown to be!
How mean all people and their ways,
How ignorant their sympathy,
And how impertinent their praise;
What they for virtuousness esteem'd,
How far removed from heavenly right;
What pettiness their trouble seem'd,
How undelightful their delight;
To my necessity how strange
The sunshine and the song of birds;
How dull the clouds' continual change,
How foolishly content the herds;
How unaccountable the law
Which bade me sit in blindness here,
While she, the sun by which I saw,
Shed splendour in an idle sphere!
And then I kiss'd her stolen glove,
And sigh'd to reckon and define
The modes of martyrdom in love,
And how far each one might be mine.
I thought how love, whose vast estate
Is earth and air and sun and sea,
Encounters oft the beggar's fate,
Despised on score of poverty;
How Heaven, inscrutable in this,
Lets the gross general make or mar
The destiny of love, which is
So tender and particular;
How nature, as unnatural
And contradicting nature's source,
Which is but love, seems most of all
Well-pleased to harry true love's course;
How, many times, it comes to pass
That trifling shades of temperament,
Affecting only one, alas,
Not love, but love's success prevent;
How manners often falsely paint
The man; how passionate respect,
Hid by itself, may bear the taint
Of coldness and a dull neglect;
And how a little
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 100100 11011101 01000101 11011101 01001101 111111001 110111001 1101111 11001101 010101100 1100111011 1110101 00110101 111111 1011101 1101110 01110111 11011111 110101 01011101 0110101 11110111 11011111 11110111 11111101 11110101 11110101 11111111 11010101 01111111 11011101 01011111 110101001 11110101 10110111 1111101 01111111 0100111 01111 01010101 11000101 11010111 11110001 11010011 1111111 1101 11110101 01111101 01111101 11111101 11010101 1101011 01011101 11011101 11010111 110111 11011101 0111101 01110101 11010101 11111101 11001001 10101 11010101 11110101 110101001 10111101 11010101 110111 11010101 11011101 1101 100111001 01101101 1101011 110111101 1 1111011 11111100 10110001 01110111 01110111 11110101 01111111 01011101 11011111 11110011 11001100 01010011 111101 110111001 11001101 11101 11010011 0100111 110101001 11001001 1010001 11110101 11011111 1101101 01110101 01110001 01110001 01111111 11111101 11010101 0101011 01111100 110010001 101100111 01001111 11000100 11010100 0010101 11111111 11110111 11011111 11011100 01010101 11110101 11010101 01110001 11011101 11000101 01010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 4,196 |
Words | 764 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 45, 17, 9, 5, 50 |
Lines Amount | 126 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 672 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 152 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:55 min read
- 106 Views
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"The Angel In The House. Book I. Canto V." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7360/the-angel-in-the-house.--book-i.--canto-v.>.
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