Analysis of The House of Christmas
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 (Kensington, London) – 1936 (Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire)
There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.
A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.
This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.
To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.
Scheme | XABACCCA XDCDEEED XABAFFFA XGXXHHHG XXDAGGBA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (25%) Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11010101 111111 00111110 11111 01010111 110100101 1010110101 101111 1111011 0101001 01111100101 0100111 111100101 01010101 110111001001 1011101 0100110 101101 1011110 110111 1111100111 1101111101 001111111 10011 111111111 010111 01101001101 110100101 1101111101011 010111001001 1101001001 1101001 111010010 1111 11101110 0010111 101101101001 1011101011 10111110 011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,376 |
Words | 273 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 214 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 54 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 08, 2023
- 1:22 min read
- 194 Views
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"The House of Christmas" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/16000/the-house-of-christmas>.
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