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

Richard Crashaw

Richard Crashaw, was an English poet, styled "the divine," and known as one of the central figures associated with the Metaphysical poets in 17th Century English literature. The son of a prominent Puritan minister, Crashaw was educated at Charterhouse School and Pembroke College, Cambridge. After taking a degree, Crashaw began to publish religious poetry and to teach at Cambridge. During the English Civil War he was ejected from his college position and went into exile in Italy. While in exile he converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism. Crashaw's poetry is firmly within the Metaphysical tradition. Though his oeuvre is considered of uneven quality and among the weakest examples of the genre, his work is said to be marked by a focus toward "love with the smaller graces of life and the profounder truths of religion, while he seems forever preoccupied with the secret architecture of things." more…

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