Analysis of In No Strange Land

Francis Thompson 1859 (City of Preston, Lancashire) – 1907 (London)



The kingdom of God is within you

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?

Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.

The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.

But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!


Scheme X AAAA BCBC BDBD EFEF GHGH GIGI
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 010111011 110100111 110100111 110100111 1111 101111010 01011101 111101010 11110111 110101010 01010101 0111111 111011101 010111010 11010101 11111110 1101011 111111110 10011111 1101011010 10110011 100111110 110110101 011101010 11111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 920
Words 164
Sentences 9
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 25
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 101
Words per stanza (avg) 23
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

49 sec read
243

Francis Thompson

The Rt Rev Francis William Banahene Thompson was Bishop of Accra from 1983 to 1996. more…

All Francis Thompson poems | Francis Thompson Books

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