Analysis of Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister
Gr-r-r---there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!
If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims---
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames!
At the meal we sit together:
_Salve tibi!_ I must hear
Wise talk of the kind of weather,
Sort of season, time of year:
_Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely
Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt:
What's the Latin name for ``parsley''?_
What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?
Whew! We'll have our platter burnished,
Laid with care on our own shelf!
With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,
Rinsed like something sacrificial
Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps---
Marked with L. for our initial!
(He-he! There his lily snaps!)
_Saint_, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank
With Sanchicha, telling stories,
Steeping tresses in the tank,
Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs,
---Can't I see his dead eye glow,
Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's?
(That is, if he'd let it show!)
When he finishes refection,
Knife and fork he never lays
Cross-wise, to my recollection,
As do I, in Jesu's praise.
I the Trinity illustrate,
Drinking watered orange-pulp---
In three sips the Arian frustrate;
While he drains his at one gulp.
Oh, those melons? If he's able
We're to have a feast! so nice!
One goes to the Abbot's table,
All of us get each a slice.
How go on your flowers? None double
Not one fruit-sort can you spy?
Strange!---And I, too, at such trouble,
Keep them close-nipped on the sly!
There's a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:
If I trip him just a-dying,
Sure of heaven as sure can be,
Spin him round and send him flying
Off to hell, a Manichee?
Or, my scrofulous French novel
On grey paper with blunt type!
Simply glance at it, you grovel
Hand and foot in Belial's gripe:
If I double down its pages
At the woeful sixteenth print,
When he gathers his greengages,
Ope a sieve and slip it in't?
Or, there's Satan!---one might venture
Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave
Such a flaw in the indenture
As he'd miss till, past retrieve,
Blasted lay that rose-acacia
We're so proud of! _Hy, Zy, Hine ..._
'St, there's Vespers! _Plena grati
Ave, Virgo!_ Gr-r-r---you swine!
Scheme | ABABCDCD EXEXFGFG HIHIJKJK XLXLAMAM NONOPQPQ JRJRJSJS ATATCFCU JVJVXXAF EWEWUXBN |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111111010 10111011 11111010 1111111 11101110 1111101 11101110 1111111 10111010 11111 11101110 1110111 1011110 1111111 1010111 1011111 111101010 11111011 101011110 00101001 1110010 11111101 111110010 1111101 1111010 1110101 111010 110001 1110111 1111111 11101001 1111111 111001 1011101 1111010 111011 1010010 1010101 01101001 1111111 11101110 1110111 1110110 1111101 111110110 1111111 10111110 1111101 101101 1111101 101011 1110101 11111010 11101111 11101110 11101 111110 1110111 10111110 101011 11101110 1010011 111011 10101101 11101110 1111111 10100010 1111101 10111010 11111111 11111 1111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,437 |
Words | 430 |
Sentences | 48 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 72 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 201 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 46 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 13, 2023
- 2:15 min read
- 249 Views
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"Soliloquy Of The Spanish Cloister" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/30409/soliloquy-of-the-spanish-cloister>.
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