Analysis of The Red Cross Nurse
ONE summer day, gleaming in memory,
We drove, my Joy and I,
Through fragrant hawthorn lanes
Gold-fringed with wisps of rye
Brushed off the harvest wains,
From that old, gladsome town of Shrewsbury,
Throned on twin hills and girdled by a loop
Of the brown Severn, out to Battlefield.
Henry the Fourth with his usurping sword
Smote here the haughty Percies,
And after builded here, as due to Him
Who made rebellion stoop
And lesser traitors to chief traitor yield,
A church. Decayed, restored,
Its centuries afford.
To stranger eyes, enshadowed by the view
Of that ridged burial plain from which it grew,
No sight more sacred than a crude
Image of visage dim,
Hewn by some ancient tool from forest wood,
Our Lady of the Mercies.
Even so long ago amid the slaughter,
Hushed now beneath its coverlet of flowers,
Groped this imperfect dream
Of Pity, pure, divine.
Madonna, look to-day upon thy daughter
And know her by the crimson cross, the sign
Of love that shall at last, at last redeem
This war-torn world of ours
Scheme | ABCBCADEFCGDEFFHHIGJKLMNOLONM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101100100 111101 11011 111111 110101 11111110 111101101 101101110 100111101 110101 010111111 110101 0101011101 010101 110001 11011101 11110011111 11110101 101101 1111011101 10101010 10110101010 110111110 110101 110101 01011101110 0101010101 1111111101 1111110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 992 |
Words | 180 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 29 |
Lines Amount | 29 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 803 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 178 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 54 sec read
- 80 Views
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"The Red Cross Nurse" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/24914/the-red-cross-nurse>.
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