Analysis of AThe Anniverse. AN ELEGY.
Henry King 1592 (Worminghall, Buckinghamshire) – 1669 (Chichester)
So soon grown old! hast thou been six years dead?
Poor earth, once by my Love inhabited!
And must I live to calculate the time
To which thy blooming youth could never climbe,
But fell in the ascent! yet have not I
Studi'd enough thy losses history.
How happy were mankind if Death's strict lawes
Consum'd our lamentations like the cause!
Or that our grief turning to dust might end
With the dissolved body of a friend!
But sacred Heaven! O how just thou art
In stamping deaths impression on that heart
Which through thy favours would grow insolent,
Were it not physick't by sharp discontent.
If then it stand resolv'd in thy decree
That still I must doom'd to a Desart be
Sprung out of my lone thoughts, which know no path
But what my own misfortune beaten hath:
If thou wilt bind me living to a coarse,
And I must slowly waste; I then of force
Stoop to thy great appointment, and obey
That will which nought avail me to gainsay.
For whil'st in sorrowes Maze I wander on,
I do but follow lifes vocation.
Sure we were made to grieve: at our first birth
With cries we took possession of the earth;
And though the lucky man reputed be
Fortunes adopted son, yet onely he
Is Natures true born child, who summes his years
(Like me) with no Arithmetick but tears.
Scheme | ABCCDEFGHHIIJKEELLMMNNOPQQEERS |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1111111111 1111110100 011111001 1111011101 1100011111 1001110100 1100111111 01101101 11101101111 100110101 1101011111 0101010111 111111100 011111001 1111010101 111111011 1111111111 1111010101 1111110101 0111011111 1111010001 111101111 110111101 111101010 11011111011 1111010101 0101010101 100101111 1101111111 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,264 |
Words | 236 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 30 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 989 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 234 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 99 Views
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"AThe Anniverse. AN ELEGY." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17639/athe-anniverse.-an-elegy.>.
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