Analysis of A Poor Scholar Of The 'Forties
Padraic Colum 1881 (County Longford) – 1972 (Enfield)
MY eyelids red and heavy arc
With bending o'er the smold'ring peat.
I know the Aeneid now by heart,
My Virgil read in cold and heat,
In loneliness and hunger smart.
And I know Homer, too, I ween,
As Munster poets know Ossian.
And I must walk this road that winds
Twixt bog and bog, while east there lies
A city with its men and books;
With treasures open to the wise,
Heart-words from equals, comrade-looks;
Down here they have but tale and song,
They talk Repeal the whole night long.
'You teach Greek verbs and Latin nouns,'
The dreamer of Young Ireland said,
'You do not hear the muffled call,
The sword being forged, the far-off tread
Of hosts to meet as Gael and Gall
What good to us your wisdom-store,
Your Latin verse, your Grecian lore?'
And what to me is Gael or Gall?
Less than the Latin or the Greek
I teach these by the dim rush-light
In smoky cabins night and week.
But what avail my teaching slight?
Years hence, in rustic speech, a phrase,
As in wild earth a Grecian vase!
Scheme | XABABCC XDEDEFF XGHGHIIHJKJKXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110101 11010011 110010111 11010101 01000101 01110111 1101011 01111111 11011111 01011101 11010101 1111011 11111101 11010111 11110101 010111001 11110101 011010111 11111101 11111101 11011101 01111111 11010101 11110111 01010101 11011101 11010101 10110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 968 |
Words | 190 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 7, 14 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 254 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 62 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 57 sec read
- 71 Views
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