Analysis of To Cowper
Anne Brontë 1820 (Thornton, West Yorkshire) – 1849 (Scarborough, North Yorkshire)
Sweet are thy strains, celestial Bard;
And oft, in childhood's years,
I've read them o'er and o'er again,
With floods of silent tears.
The language of my inmost heart,
I traced in every line;
My sins, my sorrows, hopes, and fears,
Were there -- and only mine.
All for myself the sigh would swell,
The tear of anguish start;
I little knew what wilder woe
Had filled the Poet's heart.
I did not know the nights of gloom,
The days of misery;
The long, long years of dark despair,
That crushed and tortured thee.
But, they are gone; from earth at length
Thy gentle soul is pass'd,
And in the bosom of its God
Has found its home at last.
It must be so, if God is love,
And answers fervent prayer;
Then surely thou shalt dwell on high,
And I may meet thee there.
Is he the source of every good,
The spring of purity?
Then in thine hours of deepest woe,
Thy God was still with thee.
How else, when every hope was fled,
Couldst thou so fondly cling
To holy things and holy men?
And how so sweetly sing,
Of things that God alone could teach?
And whence that purity,
That hatred of all sinful ways --
That gentle charity?
Are these the symptoms of a heart
Of heavenly grace bereft:
For ever banished from its God,
To Satan's fury left?
Yet, should thy darkest fears be true,
If Heaven be so severe,
That such a soul as thine is lost, --
Oh! how shall I appear?
Scheme | XABXCDAD XCEC XFGF XHIH XGXG XFEF XJBJ XFXF CKIK XLXL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110101 01011 1111001001 111101 0101111 1101001 11110101 010101 1110111 011101 11011101 110101 11110111 011100 01111101 110101 11111111 110111 00010111 111111 11111111 010101 11011111 011111 110111001 011100 101101101 111111 111100111 111101 11010101 011101 11110111 011100 11011101 110100 11010101 1100101 11010111 11101 11110111 1101101 11011111 111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,416 |
Words | 263 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 103 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 26 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 130 Views
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"To Cowper" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3185/to-cowper>.
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