Analysis of In Praise of New Netherland

Jacob Steendam 1615 (Kniphausen) – 1672 (Batavia)



"You poor, who know not how your living to obtain;
You affluent, who seek in mind to be content;
Choose you New Netherland, which no one shall disdain;
Before you time and stregth here fruitlessly are spent.

The birds obscure the sky, so numerous in their flight;
The animals roam wild, and flatten down the ground;
The fish swarm in the waters and exclude the light;
The oysters there, than which none better can be found;
Are piled up, heap on heap, till islands they attain;
And vegetation clothes the forest, mean and plain.

...a living view does always meet your eye,
Of Eden, and the promised land of Jacob's seed;
Who would not, then, in such a formed community,
Desire to be a Freeman; and the rights decreed,
To each and every one, by Amstel's burgher lords,
T'enjoy? and treat with honor what their rule awards?"


Scheme ABAB CDCDAA XEXEFF
Poetic Form
Metre 111111110101 110011011110 111100111101 011101110011 0101011100011 010011010101 011001000101 010111110111 111111110101 00101010101 010111111 110001011101 111101010100 0101101000101 110100111101 1010111011101
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 815
Words 150
Sentences 6
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 6, 6
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 40
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 212
Words per stanza (avg) 49
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
118

Jacob Steendam

Jacob Jacobsz Steendam was a Dutch poet and a minister. He collaborated with Pieter Corneliszoon Plockhoy.  more…

All Jacob Steendam poems | Jacob Steendam Books

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