Analysis of To Men
Ella Wheeler Wilcox 1855 (Janesville) – 1919
Sirs, when you pity us, I say
You waste your pity. Let it stay,
Well corked and stored upon your shelves,
Until you need it for yourselves.
We do appreciate God's thought
In forming you, before He brought
Us into life. His art was crude,
But oh, so virile in its rude
Large elemental strength: and then
He learned His trade in making men;
Learned how to mix and mould the clay
And fashion in a finer way.
How fine that skilful way can be
You need but lift your eyes to see;
And we are glad God placed you there
To lift your eyes and find us fair.
Apprentice labour though you were,
He made you great enough to stir
The best and deepest depths of us,
And we are glad he made you thus.
Ay! we are glad of many things.
God strung our hearts with such fine strings
The least breath movces them, and we hear
Music where silence greets your ear.
We suffer so? but women's souls
Like violet powder dropped on coals,
Give forth their best in anguish. Oh,
The subtle secrets that we know,
Of joy in sorrow, strange delights
Of ecstasy in pain-filled nights,
And mysteries of gain in loss
Known but to Christ upon the Cross!
Our tears are pitiful to you?
Look how the heaven-reflecting dew
Dissolves its life in tears. The sand
Meanwhile lies hard upon the strand.
How could your pity find a place
For us, the mothers of the race?
Men may be fathers unaware,
So poor the title is you wear,
But mothers -? Who that crown adorns
Knows all its mingled blooms and thorns;
And she whose feet that path hath trod
Has walked upon the heights with God.
No, offer us not pity's cup.
There is no looking down or up
Between us: eye looks straight in eye:
Born equals, so we live and die.
Scheme | AABB CCDD EEAA FFGG HHII JJKK LLMM NNOO PPQQ RRGG SSTT UUVV |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 11110111 11110111 11010111 01111101 1101011 01010111 10111111 11110011 1010101 11110101 11110101 01000101 1111111 11111111 01111111 11110111 0101110 11110111 01010111 01111111 11111101 111011111 01111011 10110111 11011101 110010111 11110101 01010111 11010101 11000111 01001101 11110101 101110011 110100101 01110101 1110101 11110101 11010101 1111001 11010111 11011101 11110101 01111111 11010111 1101111 11110111 01111101 11011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,650 |
Words | 322 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 1:37 min read
- 299 Views
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"To Men" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10958/to-men>.
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