Analysis of Hate

James Stephens 1882 (Dublin) – 1950



My enemy came nigh,
And I
Stared fiercely in his face.
My lips went writhing back in a grimace,
And stern I watched him with a narrow eye.
Then, as I turned away, my enemy,
That bitter heart and savage, said to me:
"Some day, when this is past,
When all the arrows that we have are cast,
We may ask one another why we hate,
And fail to find a story to relate.
It may seem then to us a mystery
That we should hate each other."

Thus said he,
And did not turn away,
Waiting to hear what I might have to say,
But I fled quickly, fearing had I stayed
I might have kissed him as I would a maid.


Scheme AAXXABBCCDDBX BEEFF
Poetic Form
Metre 110011 01 110011 1111010010 0111110101 1111011100 1101010111 111111 1101011111 1111010111 0111010101 1111110100 1111110 111 011101 1011111111 1111010111 1111111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 616
Words 126
Sentences 6
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 13, 5
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 222
Words per stanza (avg) 62
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

37 sec read
182

James Stephens

James Stephens was an Irish Republican and the founding member of an originally unnamed revolutionary organisation in Dublin on 17 March 1858, later to become known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, also referred to as the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood by contemporaries. more…

All James Stephens poems | James Stephens Books

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