Analysis of Monday Before Easter
John Keble 1792 (Fairford) – 1866 (Bournemouth)
"Father to me thou art and mother dear,
And brother too, kind husband of my heart -
So speaks Andromache in boding fear,
Ere from her last embrace her hero part -
So evermore, by Faith's undying glow,
We own the Crucified in weal or woe.
Strange to our ears the church-bells of our home,
This fragrance of our old paternal fields
May be forgotten; and the time may come
When the babe's kiss no sense of pleasure yields
E'en to the doting mother: but Thine own
Thou never canst forget, nor leave alone.
There are who sigh that no fond heart is theirs,
None loves them best--O vain and selfish sigh!
Out of the bosom of His love He spares -
The Father spares the Son, for thee to die:
For thee He died--for thee He lives again:
O'er thee He watches in His boundless reign.
Thou art as much His care, as if beside
Nor man nor angel lived in Heaven or earth:
Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide
To light up worlds, or wake an insect's mirth:
They shine and shine with unexhausted store -
Thou art thy Saviour's darling--seek no more.
On thee and thine, thy warfare and thine end,
E'en in His hour of agony He thought,
When, ere the final pang His soul should rend,
The ransomed spirits one by one were brought
To His mind's eye--two silent nights and days
In calmness for His far-seen hour He stays.
Ye vaulted cells, where martyred seers of old
Far in the rocky walls of Sion sleep,
Green terraces and arched fountains cold,
Where lies the cypress shade so still and deep,
Dear sacred haunts of glory and of woe,
Help us, one hour, to trace His musings high and low:
One heart-ennobling hour! It may not be:
The unearthly thoughts have passed from earth away,
And fast as evening sunbeams from the sea
Thy footsteps all in Sion's deep decay
Were blotted from the holy ground: yet dear
Is every stone of hers; for Thou want surely here.
There is a spot within this sacred dale
That felt Thee kneeling--touched Thy prostrate brow:
One Angel knows it. O might prayer avail
To win that knowledge! sure each holy vow
Less quickly from the unstable soul would fade,
Offered where Christ in agony was laid.
Might tear of ours once mingle with the blood
That from His aching brow by moonlight fell,
Over the mournful joy our thoughts would brood,
Till they had framed within a guardian spell
To chase repining fancies, as they rise,
Like birds of evil wing, to mar our sacrifice.
So dreams the heart self-flattering, fondly dreams; -
Else wherefore, when the bitter waves o'erflow,
Miss we the light, Gethsemane, that streams
From thy dear name, where in His page of woe
It shines, a pale kind star in winter's sky?
Who vainly reads it there, in vain had seen Him die.
Scheme | ABABCC XDXDEE FGFGXX HIHIJJ XKBKLL MNMNCC OPOPAX QRQRSS XTXTXX UCUCGG |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011110101 0101110111 111011 1101010101 110110101 110100111 111010111101 11011010101 1101000111 1011111101 11101010111 1101011101 1111111111 1111110101 1101011111 0101011111 1111111101 10111001101 1111111101 11110101011 1110111001 111111111 1101111 111110111 110111011 110110110011 1101011111 011011101 1111110101 01011111011 1101110111 100101111 110001101 1101011101 1101110011 1111011110101 11010101111 00101111101 011101101 11101101 0101010111 1100110111101 1101011101 1111011101 1101111101 1111011101 11010010111 1011010011 11110110101 111101111 10010110111 11110101001 11110111 111101111010 11011100101 11101011 1101111 1111101111 1101110101 110111011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,659 |
Words | 493 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 60 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 208 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 50 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:31 min read
- 96 Views
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"Monday Before Easter" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/23588/monday-before-easter>.
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