Analysis of A Thanksgiving Poem



The sun hath shed its kindly light,
Our harvesting is gladly o'er
Our fields have felt no killing blight,
Our bins are filled with goodly store.

From pestilence, fire, flood, and sword
We have been spared by thy decree,
And now with humble hearts, O Lord,
We come to pay our thanks to thee.

We feel that had our merits been
The measure of thy gifts to us,
We erring children, born of sin,
Might not now be rejoicing thus.

No deed of ours hath brought us grace;
When thou were nigh our sight was dull,
We hid in trembling from thy face,
But thou, O God, wert merciful.

Thy mighty hand o'er all the land
Hath still been open to bestow
Those blessings which our wants demand
From heaven, whence all blessings flow.

Thou hast, with ever watchful eye,
Looked down on us with holy care,
And from thy storehouse in the sky
Hast scattered plenty everywhere.

Then lift we up our songs of praise
To thee, O Father, good and kind;
To thee we consecrate our days;
Be thine the temple of each mind.

With incense sweet our thanks ascend;
Before thy works our powers pall;
Though we should strive years without end,
We could not thank thee for them all.


Scheme AXAX BCBC DEDE FGFG HIHI JKJK LMLM NXNX
Poetic Form Quatrain  (75%)
Metre 01111101 1010011010 101111101 101111101 110010101 11111101 01110111 111110111 111110101 01011111 11010111 11110101 111101111 110110111 110100111 11111100 110110101 11110101 110110101 11011101 11110101 11111101 0111001 1101010 111110111 11110101 11110101 11010111 101110101 011110101 11111011 11111111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,115
Words 215
Sentences 9
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 111
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

1:05 min read
161

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 Lyrics of a Lowly Life one poem in the collection being Ode to Ethiopia more…

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