Analysis of We Must Believe
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
_'Lord, I believe: help Thou mine unbelief.'_
We must believe--
Being from birth endowed with love and trust--
Born unto loving;--and how simply just
That love--that faith!--even in the blossom-face
The babe drops dreamward in its resting-place,
Intuitively conscious of the sure
Awakening to rapture ever pure
And sweet and saintly as the mother's own,
Or the awed father's, as his arms are thrown
O'er wife and child, to round about them weave
And wind and bind them as one harvest-sheaf
Of love--to cleave to, and _forever_ cleave....
Lord, I believe:
Help Thou mine unbelief.
We must believe--
Impelled since infancy to seek some clear
Fulfillment, still withheld all seekers here;--
For never have we seen perfection nor
The glory we are ever seeking for:
But we _have_ seen--all mortal souls as one--
Have seen its _promise_, in the morning sun--
Its blest assurance, in the stars of night;--
The ever-dawning of the dark to light;--
The tears down-falling from all eyes that grieve--
The eyes uplifting from all deeps of grief,
Yearning for what at last we shall receive....
Lord, I believe:
Help Thou mine unbelief.
We must believe--
For still all unappeased our hunger goes,
From life's first waking, to its last repose:
The briefest life of any babe, or man
Outwearing even the allotted span,
Is each a life unfinished--incomplete:
For these, then, of th' outworn, or unworn feet
Denied one toddling step--O there must be
Some fair, green, flowery pathway endlessly
Winding through lands Elysian! Lord, receive
And lead each as Thine Own Child--even the Chief
Of us who didst Immortal life achieve....
Lord, I believe:
Help Thou mine unbelief.
Scheme | a AbbccddeeaaaAA AxxffgghhaaaAA AiijjkkllaaaAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011111 1101 1011011101 1101001101 11111000101 011101101 0100010101 0100110101 0101010101 1011011111 10101110111 0101111101 11111011 1101 1111 1101 0111001111 0101011101 1101110101 0101110101 1111110111 111100101 1101000111 0101010111 0111011111 011011111 1011111101 1101 1111 1101 111110101 1111011101 0101110111 11000101 1101010001 1111111111 0111011111 1111001100 10111101 01111111001 1111010101 1101 1111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,619 |
Words | 282 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 14, 14, 14 |
Lines Amount | 43 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 320 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 69 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 1:26 min read
- 101 Views
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"We Must Believe" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/21169/we-must-believe>.
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