Analysis of St. Francis Of Borgia By The Coffin Of Queen Isabel
“Open the coffin and shroud until
I look on the dead again
Ere we place her in Grenada’s vaults,
Where sleep the Monarchs of Spain;
For unto King Charles must I swear
That I myself have seen
The regal brow of the royal corpse,
Our loved, lamented Queen.”
The speaker was Borgia, Gaudia’s Duke,
A noble and gallant knight,
Whose step was welcome in courtly halls,
As his sword was keen in fight.
To him had his Monarch given the task
Of conveying to the tomb.
The Princess ravished from his arms
In the pride of youthful bloom.
While they slowly raised the coffin lid,
Borgia stood silent by,
Recalling the beauty of the dead
With low, half-uttered sigh—
Longing to look on that statue fair
That wanted but life’s warm breath,
That matchless form which he hoped to find
Beautiful e’en in death.
’Tis done, and with silent, rev’rent step
To the coffin draws he near,
And sadly looks in its depths, where lies
Spain’s Queen, his sovereign dear.
But what does he see? What horrors drear
Are those that meet his eye,
For he springs aside and shades his brow
With a sharp, though stifled, cry?
Ah’ youth and beauty, in spirit gaze
On what that coffin holds—
On the fearful object that now lies
In the shroud’s white ample folds:
Nay, turn not away with loathing look,
Lest that hideous sight you see,
In a few short years from now, alas!
It is what we all shall be.
Let us learn as Francis Borgia learned,
By that lifeless form of clay,
To despise the changing things of earth,
All doomed to swift decay—
Deep into his heart the lesson sank,
Effacing earthly taint,
And Spain’s Court lost a gallant knight,
While the Church gained a Saint!
Scheme | XXXXABXB XCXCXDXD XEXEAFXF XGHGAEXE XIHIXJXJ XKXKXLCL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 100100101 1110101 1110011 110111 11011111 11111 010110101 1010101 01011011 0100101 111100101 1111101 111111001 1010101 0101111 0011101 111010101 101101 010010101 111101 10111111 1101111 11111111 100101 11011011 1010111 010101111 111101 111111101 111111 111010111 1011101 110100101 111101 101010111 0011101 111011101 11100111 001111101 1111111 111110101 1110111 101010111 111101 101110101 010101 01110101 101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,629 |
Words | 302 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 213 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 50 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 43 Views
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"St. Francis Of Borgia By The Coffin Of Queen Isabel" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33050/st.-francis-of-borgia-by-the-coffin-of-queen-isabel>.
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