Analysis of The Flaming Heart
Richard Crashaw 1612 (London) – 1649 (Loreto, Marche)
O heart, the equal poise of love's both parts,
Big alike with wounds and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same,
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame;
Live here, great heart, and love and die and kill,
And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still.
Let this immortal life, where'er it comes,
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms;
Let mystic deaths wait on 't, and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.
O sweet incendiary! show here thy art,
Upon this carcass of a hard cold heart,
Let all thy scatter'd shafts of light, that play
Among the leaves of thy large books of day,
Combin'd against this breast, at once break in
And take away from me my self and sin;
This gracious robbery shall thy bounty be,
And my best fortunes such fair spoils of me.
O thou undaunted daughter of desires!
By all thy dow'r of lights and fires,
By all the eagle in thee, all the dove,
By all thy lives and deaths of love,
By thy large draughts of intellectual day,
And by thy thirsts of love more large than they,
By all thy brim-fill'd bowls of fierce desire,
By thy last morning's draught of liquid fire,
By the full kingdom of that final kiss
That seiz'd thy parting soul and seal'd thee his,
By all the heav'ns thou hast in him,
Fair sister of the seraphim!
By all of him we have in thee,
Leave nothing of my self in me:
Let me so read thy life that I
Unto all life of mine may die.
Scheme | AABBCCDAEEFFGGHHEEIIJJGGKKLMNBEEOO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101011111 1011101 10110011101 0111110101 1111010101 0101010101 1101011011 10011101 11011110111 01110011111 11010001111 0111010111 1111011111 0101111111 0101111110 0101111101 11010011101 0111011111 11010101010 1111111010 1101001101 11110111 1111101001 0111111111 11111111010 11110111010 1011011101 1111010111 11011101 110101 11111101 11011101 11111111 10111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,481 |
Words | 276 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 34 |
Lines Amount | 34 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,100 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 274 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 16, 2023
- 1:25 min read
- 90 Views
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"The Flaming Heart" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/30065/the-flaming-heart>.
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