Analysis of My Lady The Tyranness

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



Me since your fair ambition bows
Feodary to those gracious brows,
Is nothing mine will not confess
Your sovran sweet rapaciousness?
Though use to the white yoke inures,
Half-petulant is
Your loving rebel for somewhat his,
Not yours, my love, not yours!

Behold my skies, which make with me
One passionate tranquillity!
Wrap thyself in them as a robe,
She shares them not; their azures probe,
No countering wings thy flight endures.
Nay, they do stole
Me like an aura of her soul.
I yield them, love, for yours!

But mine these hills and fields, which put
Not on the sanctity of her foot.
Far off, my dear, far off the sweet
Grave pianissimo of your feet!
My earth, perchance, your sway abjures?--
Your absence broods
O'er all, a subtler presence. Woods,
Fields, hills, all yours, all yours!

Nay then, I said, I have my thought,
Which never woman's reaching raught;
Being strong beyond a woman's might,
And high beyond a woman's height,
Shaped to my shape in all contours.--
I looked, and knew
No thought but you were garden to.
All yours, my love, all yours!

Meseemeth still, I have my life;
All-clement Her its resolute strife
Evades; contained, relinquishing
Her mitigating eyes; a thing
Which the whole girth of God secures.
Ah, fool, pause! pause!
I had no life, until it was
All yours, my love, all yours!

Yet, stern possession! I have my death,
Sole yielding up of my sole breath;
Which all within myself I die,
All in myself must cry the cry
Which the deaf body's wall immures.--
Thought fashioneth
My death without her.--Ah, even death
All yours, my love, all yours!

Death, then, he hers. I have my heaven,
For which no arm of hers has striven;
Which solitary I must choose,
And solitary win or lose.--
Ah, but not heaven my own endures!
I must perforce
Taste you, my stream, in God your source,--
So steep my heaven in yours.

At last I said--I have my God,
Who doth desire me, though a clod,
And from His liberal Heaven shall He
Bar in mine arms His privacy.
Himself for mine Himself assures.--
None shall deny
God to be mine, but He and I
All yours, my love, all yours!

I have no fear at all lest I
Without her draw felicity.
God for His Heaven will not forego
Her whom I found such heaven below,
And she will train Him to her lures.
Nought, lady, I love
In you but more is loved above;
What made me, makes Him yours.

'I, thy sought own, am I forgot?'
Ha, thou?--thou liest, I seek thee not.
Why what, thou painted parrot, Fame,
What have I taught thee but her name?
Hear, thou slave Fame, while Time endures,
I give her thee;
Page her triumphal name!--Lady,
Take her, the thrall is yours.


Scheme aaxaabbc deffcggc eeeeaaxc eeeecxeC hhiicxxC jjekajjC llmmcnnc eeddckkC kdoocppc eeqqcddc
Poetic Form Etheree  (34%)
Tetractys  (24%)
Metre 11110101 111101 11011101 11011 1110111 11001 110101111 111111 01111111 11001 1101101 1111111 110011101 1111 11110101 111111 11110111 110100101 11111101 11111 1101111 1101 1010100101 111111 11111111 11010101 101010101 01010101 1111011 1101 11110101 111111 111111 11001101 01010100 0100101 10111101 1111 11110111 111111 110101111 11011111 1101111 1011101 1011011 11 110101101 111111 111011110 111110110 1100111 0100111 111101101 1101 11110111 1111001 11111111 110101101 0111001011 10111100 01110101 1101 11111101 111111 11111111 01010100 111101101 011111001 01111101 11011 01111101 111111 11111101 11111111 11110101 11111101 11111101 1101 10010110 100111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 2,526
Words 488
Sentences 39
Stanzas 10
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 80
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 197
Words per stanza (avg) 48
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:27 min read
31

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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