Analysis of What Shall I Do For the Land that Bred Me
Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844 (Stratford, London) – 1889 (Dublin)
What shall I do for the land that bred me,
Her homes and fields that folded and fed me?—
Be under her banner and live for her honour:
Under her banner I’ll live for her honour.
CHORUS. Under her banner live for her honour.
Not the pleasure, the pay, the plunder,
But country and flag, the flag I am under—
There is the shilling that finds me willing
To follow a banner and fight for honour.
CH. We follow her banner, we fight for her honour.
Call me England’s fame’s fond lover,
Her fame to keep, her fame to recover.
Spend me or end me what God shall send me,
But under her banner I live for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we march for her honour.
Where is the field I must play the man on?
O welcome there their steel or cannon.
Immortal beauty is death with duty,
If under her banner I fall for her honour.
CH. Under her banner we fall for her honour.
| Scheme | AABBB BBXBB BBABB XXABB |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 1111101111 0101110011 11001001101 1001011101 10100101101 101001010 11001011110 1101011110 1100100111 111001011101 11101110 0111011010 1111111111 11001011101 11001011101 1101111011 110111110 0101011110 11001011101 11001011101 |
| Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
| Characters | 871 |
| Words | 172 |
| Sentences | 17 |
| Stanzas | 4 |
| Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5 |
| Lines Amount | 20 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
| Words per line (avg) | 8 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 164 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 10, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 144 Views
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