Analysis of Eros
Robert Seymour Bridges 1844 (Walmer, Kent) – 1930 (Boars Hill, Berkshire)
Why hast thou nothing in thy face?
Thou idol of the human race,
Thou tyrant of the human heart,
The flower of lovely youth that art;
Yea, and that standest in thy youth
An image of eternal Truth,
With thy exuberant flesh so fair,
That only Pheidias might compare,
Ere from his chaste marmoreal form
Time had decayed the colours warm;
Like to his gods in thy proud dress,
Thy starry sheen of nakedness.
Surely thy body is thy mind,
For in thy face is nought to find,
Only thy soft unchristen’d smile,
That shadows neither love nor guile,
But shameless will and power immense,
In secret sensuous innocence.
O king of joy, what is thy thought?
I dream thou knowest it is nought,
And wouldst in darkness come, but thou
Makest the light where’er thou go.
Ah yet no victim of thy grace,
None who e’er long’d for thy embrace,
Hath cared to look upon thy face.
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEXA FFGGXX XBXXAAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 11110011 11010101 11010101 010110111 1011011 11010101 110100111 1101101 111111 1101011 11110111 110111 10110111 10111111 101111 1110111 110101001 010100100 11111111 1111111 01010111 101111 11110111 11111101 11110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 868 |
Words | 160 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 6, 7 |
Lines Amount | 25 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 222 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 53 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 23, 2023
- 48 sec read
- 146 Views
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"Eros" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31793/eros>.
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