Analysis of Two Sonnets. To Haydon, With A Sonnet Written On Seeing The Elgin Marbles
John Keats 1795 (Moorgate) – 1821 (Rome)
I.
Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not eagle's wings,
That what I want I know not where to seek,
And think that I would not be over-meek,
In rolling out upfollowed thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak.
Think, too, that all these numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture's hem?
For, when men stared at what was most divine
With brainless idiotism and o'erwise phlegm,
Thou hadst beheld the full Hesperian shine
Of their star in the east, and gone to worship them.
II. On Seeing The Elgin Marbles.
My spirit is too weak - mortality
Weighs heavily upon me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep
That I have not the cloudy winds to keep,
Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old Time -- with a billowy main --
A sun -- a shadow of a magnitude.
Scheme | ABCCBBCCBDEDEDE X XFFAAFFAGHGHGH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (23%) Etheree (23%) |
Metre | 1 1001111101 0100011101 0111111101 1111111111 0111111101 010111 10101111 0111011101 1111110111 110111111 1111111101 1101011 1110111 111001011101 111001010 1101110100 110001110101 0101010001 111011111 1011010101 1101010011 1111010111 11010010101 110110101 1101111 1111001101 1101001101 101111011 01011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,203 |
Words | 225 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 15, 1, 14 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 315 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 74 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 10, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 128 Views
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"Two Sonnets. To Haydon, With A Sonnet Written On Seeing The Elgin Marbles" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 6 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/23533/two-sonnets.-to-haydon%2C-with-a-sonnet-written-on-seeing-the-elgin-marbles>.
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