Analysis of Peace and Pain
John Boyle O'Reilly 1844 (Dowth) – 1890 (Boston)
THE day and night are symbols of creation,
And each has part in all that God has made;
There is no ill without its compensation,
And life and death are only light and shade.
There never beat a heart so base and sordid
But felt at times a sympathetic glow;
There never lived a virtue unrewarded,
Nor died a vice without its meed of woe.
In this brief life despair should never reach us;
The sea looks wide because the shores are dim;
The star that led the Magi still can teach us
The way to go if we but look to Him.
And as we wade, the darkness closing o'er us,
The hungry waters surging to the chin,
Our deeds will rise like stepping-stones before us—
The good and bad—for we may use the sin.
A sin of youth, atoned for and forgiven,
Takes on a virtue, if we choose to find:
When clouds across our onward path are driven,
We still may steer by its pale light behind.
A sin forgotten is in part to pay for,
A sin remembered is a constant gain:
Sorrow, next joy, is what we ought to pray for,
As next to peace we profit most from pain.
Scheme | ABABXCBC DEDEDFDF AGAGHIHI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01011101010 0111011111 1111011010 0101110101 11010111010 111100101 11010101 1101011111 01110111011 0111010111 01110101111 0111111111 011101010101 0101010101 101111101011 0101111101 0111110010 1101011111 110110101110 1111111101 01010101111 0101010101 10111111111 1111110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,037 |
Words | 207 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 267 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 68 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:02 min read
- 113 Views
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"Peace and Pain" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22034/peace-and-pain>.
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