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 Views
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