Analysis of Patience, Hard Thing! The Hard Thing But To Pray
Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844 (Stratford, London) – 1889 (Dublin)
Patience, hard thing! the hard thing but to pray,
But bid for, Patience is! Patience who asks
Wants war, wants wounds; weary his times, his tasks;
To do without, take tosses, and obey.
Rare patience roots in these, and, these away,
Nowhere. Natural heart's ivy, Patience masks
Our ruins of wrecked past purpose. There she basks
Purple eyes and seas of liquid leaves all day.
We hear our hearts grate on themselves: it kills
To bruise them dearer. Yet the rebellious wills
Of us we do bid God bend to him even so.
And where is he who more and more distils
Delicious kindness?—He is patient. Patience fills
His crisp combs, and that comes those ways we know.
Scheme | ABBAABBA CCDBCD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011011111 1111011011 1111101111 1101110001 1101010101 1100110101 101011110111 10101110111 11101110111 11110100101 111111111101 011111011 010101110101 1110111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 660 |
Words | 121 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 256 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 59 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 36 sec read
- 117 Views
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"Patience, Hard Thing! The Hard Thing But To Pray" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/15874/patience%2C-hard-thing%21-the-hard-thing-but-to-pray>.
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