Analysis of Meditation under Stars
George Meredith 1828 (Portsmouth, Hampshire) – 1909 (Box Hill, Surrey)
What links are ours with orbs that are
So resolutely far:
The solitary asks, and they
Give radiance as from a shield:
Still at the death of day,
The seen, the unrevealed.
Implacable they shine
To us who would of Life obtain
An answer for the life we strain
To nourish with one sign.
Nor can imagination throw
The penetrative shaft: we pass
The breath of thought, who would divine
If haply they may grow
As Earth; have our desire to know;
If life comes there to grain from grass,
And flowers like ours of toil and pain;
Has passion to beat bar,
Win space from cleaving brain;
The mystic link attain,
Whereby star holds on star.
Those visible immortals beam
Allurement to the dream:
Ireful at human hungers brook
No question in the look.
For ever virgin to our sense,
Remote they wane to gaze intense:
Prolong it, and in ruthlessness they smite
The beating heart behind the ball of sight:
Till we conceive their heavens hoar,
Those lights they raise but sparkles frore,
And Earth, our blood-warm Earth, a shuddering prey
To that frigidity of brainless ray.
Yet space is given for breath of thought
Beyond our bounds when musing: more
When to that musing love is brought,
And love is asked of love's wherefore.
'Tis Earth's, her gift; else have we nought:
Her gift, her secret, here our tie.
And not with her and yonder sky?
Bethink you: were it Earth alone
Breeds love, would not her region be
The sole delight and throne
Of generous Deity?
To deeper than this ball of sight
Appeal the lustrous people of the night.
Fronting yon shoreless, sown with fiery sails,
It is our ravenous that quails,
Flesh by its craven thirsts and fears distraught.
The spirit leaps alight,
Doubts not in them is he,
The binder of his sheaves, the sane, the right:
Of magnitude to magnitude is wrought,
To feel it large of the great life they hold:
In them to come, or vaster intervolved,
The issues known in us, our unsolved solved:
That there with toil Life climbs the self-same Tree,
Whose roots enrichment have from ripeness dropped.
So may we read and little find them cold:
Let it but be the lord of Mind to guide
Our eyes; no branch of Reason's growing lopped;
Nor dreaming on a dream; but fortified
By day to penetrate black midnight; see,
Hear, feel, outside the senses; even that we,
The specks of dust upon a mound of mould,
We who reflect those rays, though low our place,
To them are lastingly allied.
So may we read, and little find them cold:
Not frosty lamps illumining dead space,
Not distant aliens, not senseless Powers.
The fire is in them whereof we are born;
The music of their motion may be ours.
Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth and voiced
Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced.
Of love, the grand impulsion, we behold
The love that lends her grace
Among the starry fold.
Then at new flood of customary morn,
Look at her through her showers,
Her mists, her streaming gold,
A wonder edges the familiar face:
She wears no more that robe of printed hours;
Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.
Scheme | aabcbcdeedfgdffgeaeea hhiijjcklabbmlmacnnopop kkqqmkpkmrcxpsRtstpprut Ruvwvxxrurwvruvv |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111101111 11001 0100101 11001101 110111 0101 010011 11111101 11010111 110111 1100101 01111 01111101 11111 1111001011 11111111 0101101101 110111 11111 010101 011111 11000101 1101 111011 110001 110101101 01111101 0110010011 0101010111 11011101 11111101 011011101001 1111101 111101111 011011101 11110111 0111111 11011111 010101101 01100101 1101101 11110101 010101 1100100 11011111 0101010101 1011111001 111010011 1111010101 010101 110111 0101110101 11011011 1111101111 0111111 01010110011 1111110111 110101111 1111010111 1111011111 1011111101 110101110 11110111 11110101011 0111010111 11011111101 11110001 1111010111 1101111 11010011010 0101011111 01011101110 10111100101 11000101 11011101 011101 010101 111111001 1101010 010101 0101000101 11111111010 11110101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,942 |
Words | 547 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 21, 23, 23, 16 |
Lines Amount | 83 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 593 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 136 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:45 min read
- 30 Views
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"Meditation under Stars" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/15498/meditation-under-stars>.
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