Analysis of The Burden of Time
Frederick George Scott 1861 (Montreal, Quebec) – 1944 (Quebec City, Quebec)
Before the seas and mountains were brought forth,
I reigned. I hung the universe in space,
I capped earth's poles with ice to South and North,
And set the moving tides their bounds and place.
I smoothed the granite mountains with my hand,
My fingers gave the continents their form;
I rent the heavens and loosed upon the land
The fury of the whirlwind and the storm.
I stretched the dark sea like a nether sky
Fronting the stars between the ice-clad zones;
I gave the deep his thunder; the Most High
Knows well the voice that shakes His mountain thrones.
I trod the ocean caverns black as night,
And silent as the bounds of outer space,
And where great peaks rose darkly towards the light
I planted life to root and grow apace.
Then through a stillness deeper than the grave's,
The coral spires rose slowly one by one,
Until the white shafts pierced the upper waves
And shone like silver in the tropic sun.
I ploughed with glaciers down the mountain glen,
And graved the iron shore with stream and tide;
I gave the bird her nest, the lion his den,
The snake long jung~le-grass wherein to hide.
In lonely gorge and over hill and plain,
I sowed the giant forests of the world;
The great earth like a human heart in pain
Has quivered with the meteors I have hurled.
I plunged whole continents beneath the deep,
And left them sepulchred a million years;
I called, and lo, the drowned lands rose from sleep,
Sundering the waters of the hemispheres.
I am the lord and arbiter of man --
I hold and crush between my finger-tips
Wild hordes that drive the desert caravan,
Great nations that go down to sea in ships.
In sovereign scorn I tread the races down,
As each its puny destiny fulfils,
On plain and island, or where huge cliffs frown,
Wrapt in the deep thought of the ancient hills.
The wild sea searches vainly round the land
For those proud fleets my arm has swept away;
Vainly the wind along the desert sand
Calls the great names of kings who once held sway.
Yea, Nineveh and Babylon the great
Are fallen -- like ripe ears at harvest-tide;
I set my heel upon their pomp and state,
The people's serfdom and the monarch's pride.
One doom waits all -- art, speech, law, gods, and men,
Forests and mountains, stars and shining sun, --
The hand that made them shall unmake again,
I curse them and they wither one by one.
Waste altars, tombs, dead cities where men trod,
Shall roll through space upon the darkened globe,
Till I myself be overthrown, and God
Cast off creation like an outworn robe.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EXEB FBFB BGXG HIHI JKJK LXLB MNMN OBOX CPCP QIQI HGHG RSRS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 0101010011 111101001 1111111101 0101011101 1101010111 1101010011 11010010101 010101001 1101110101 1001010111 1101110011 1101111101 1101010111 0101011101 01111100101 1101110101 1101010101 0101110111 0101110101 0111000101 1111010101 0101011101 11010101011 0111010111 0101010101 1101010101 0111010101 1110100111 1111000101 01110101 1101011111 1010101 1101010011 1101011101 111101010 1101111101 0101110101 111101001 1101011111 1001110101 0111010101 1111111101 1001010101 1011111111 110001001 1101111101 1111011101 01010011 1111111101 1001010101 011111101 1110110111 1101110111 1111010101 11110101 110101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,447 |
Words | 459 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 14 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 56 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 140 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:19 min read
- 35 Views
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"The Burden of Time" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/14254/the-burden-of-time>.
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