Analysis of A Psalm of Labouring Life
Franklin P. Adams 1881 (Chicago, Illinois) – 1960 (New York City, New York)
Tell me not, in doctored numbers,
Life is but a name for work!
For the labour that encumbers
Me I wish that I could shirk.
Life is phony! Life is rotten!
And the wealthy have no soul;
Why should you be picking cotton,
Why should I be mining coal?
Not employment and not sorrow
Is my destined end or way;
But to act that each tomorrow
Finds me idler than today.
Work is long, and plutes are lunching;
Money is the thing I crave;
But my heart continues punching
Funeral time-clocks to the grave.
In the world's uneven battle,
In the swindle known as life,
Be not like the stockyard's cattle--
Stick your partner with the knife!
Trust no boss, however pleasant!
Capital is but a curse!
Strike,--strike in the living present!
Fill, oh fill the bulging purse.!
Lives of strikers all remind us
We can make our lives a crime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Bills for double overtime.
Charges that, perhaps another,
Working for a stingy ten
Bucks a day, some mining brother
Seeing, shall walk out again.
Let us, then, be up and striking,
Discontent with all of it;
Still undoing, still disliking,
Learn to labour--and to quit.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMN OPOP GQGQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 11101010 1110111 10111 1111111 11101110 0010111 11111010 1111101 10100110 1110111 1111101 11100101 11101110 1010111 11101010 10011101 00101010 0010111 1110110 1110101 1111010 1001101 11001010 1110101 11101011 11110101 00101011 111010 10101010 1010101 10111010 1011101 11111010 0011111 10101010 111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,119 |
Words | 204 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 96 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:01 min read
- 36 Views
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