Analysis of Holy Russia
Francis William Lauderdale Adams 1862 – 1893
CROUCHED in the terrible land,
The circle of pitiless ice,
With frozen bloody feet
And her pestilential summer's
Fever-throb in her brow,
Look, in her deep slow eyes
The mists of her sleep of faith
Stir, and a gleam of light,
The ray of a blood-red sun,
Beams out into the dusk.
From far away, from the west,
From the east, from the south, there come
Faint sweet breaths of the breeze
Of plenteous warmth and light.
And she moves, and around her neck
She feels the iron-scaled Snake
Whose fangs suck at the heart
Hid by her tattered dress,
By her lean and hanging teat.
Russia, O land of Faith,
O realm of the ageless Slav,
O oppressed one of eternity,
This darkest hour is the hour,
The hour of the coming dawn!
Europe, the rank, the corrupt,
Lies stretched out at your feet.
Turkey, India, lo all,
East and south, it is yours!
Years, years ago a Nation,
Oppressed as you are oppressed,
Burst her bonds and leaped out,
A volcanic sea-wave of fire,
Quenched at last but in blood,
Though not before the red spray
Dashed the Pyramids, the Escurial,
Rome, and your own grey Kremlin.
That was the great sea-wave
Of a nation that disbelieved,
Of a nation that had not faith!
What shall the sea-wave be,
Of this race of eternal belief,
This nation of passionate faith!
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMHNOPQCGRSTUVCWXIKYTZ1 WI2 AGS3 G |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1001001 01011001 110101 00110 101001 100111 0110111 100111 0110111 110101 1101101 10110111 111101 11101 01100101 1101011 111101 110101 1010101 101111 1110101 101110100 110101010 01010101 1001001 111111 1010011 101111 1101010 0111101 101011 001011110 111101 1101011 1010001 1011110 110111 101011 10101111 110111 111101001 11011001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,229 |
Words | 234 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 42 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 978 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 232 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 12, 2023
- 1:10 min read
- 112 Views
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"Holy Russia" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/14022/holy-russia>.
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