Analysis of Fragment
The hand of Fate cannot be stayed,
The course of Fate cannot be steered,
By all the gods that man has made,
Nor all the devils he has feared,
Not by the prayers that might be prayed
In all the temples he has reared.
See! In your very midst there dwell
Ten thousand thousand blacks, a wedge
Forged in the furnaces of hell,
And sharpened to a cruel edge
By wrong and by injustice fell,
And driven by hatred as a sledge.
A wedge so slender at the start--
Just twenty slaves in shackles bound--
And yet, which split the land apart
With shrieks of war and battle sound,
Which pierced the nation's very heart,
And still lies cankering in the wound.
Not all the glory of your pride,
Preserved in story and in song,
Can from the judging future hide,
Through all the coming ages long,
That though you bravely fought and died,
You fought and died for what was wrong.
'Tis fixed--for them that violate
The eternal laws, naught shall avail
Till they their error expiate;
Nor shall their unborn children fail
To pay the full required weight
Into God's great, unerring scale.
Think not repentance can redeem,
That sin his wages can withdraw;
No, think as well to change the scheme
Of worlds that move in reverent awe;
Forgiveness is an idle dream,
God is not love, no, God is law.
Scheme | ABABAB CDCDCD EFEFEF GHGHGH IJIJIJ KLKXKL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01111011 01111011 11011111 11010111 11011111 01010111 10110111 11010101 1001011 01010101 11010101 010110101 01110101 11010101 01110101 11110101 11010101 0111001 11010111 01010001 11010101 11010101 11110101 11011111 11111100 001011101 1111010 11111101 11010101 011111 11010101 11110101 11111101 111101001 01011101 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,239 |
Words | 236 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 165 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 39 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 1:11 min read
- 122 Views
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"Fragment" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20704/fragment>.
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