Analysis of The Sword of Suprise
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 (Kensington, London) – 1936 (Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire)
Sunder me from my bones, O sword of God
Till they stand stark and strange as do the trees;
That I whose heart goes up with the soaring woods
May marvel as much at these.
Sunder me from my blood that in the dark
I hear that red ancestral river run
Like branching buried floods that find the sea
But never see the sun.
Give me miraculous eyes to see my eyes
Those rolling mirrors made alive in me
Terrible crystals more incredible
Than all the things they see
Sunder me from my soul, that I may see
The sins like streaming wounds, the life's brave beat
Till I shall save myself as I would save
A stranger in the street.
Scheme | XAXA XBCB XCXC CDXD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1011111111 1111011101 11111110101 1101111 1011111001 1111010101 1101011101 110101 11010011111 1101010101 1001010100 110111 1011111111 0111010111 111111111 010001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 625 |
Words | 123 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 122 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 37 sec read
- 56 Views
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