Analysis of When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted
Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) – 1936 (London)
When Earth's last picture is painted
And the tubes are twisted and dried
When the oldest colors have faded
And the youngest critic has died
We shall rest, and faith, we shall need it
Lie down for an aeon or two
'Till the Master of all good workmen
Shall put us to work anew
And those that were good shall be happy
They'll sit in a golden chair
They'll splash at a ten league canvas
With brushes of comet's hair
They'll find real saints to draw from
Magdalene, Peter, and Paul
They'll work for an age at a sitting
And never be tired at all.
And only the Master shall praise us.
And only the Master shall blame.
And no one will work for the money.
No one will work for the fame.
But each for the joy of the working,
And each, in his separate star,
Will draw the thing as he sees it.
For the God of things as they are!
Scheme | ABABCDEDFGHGIJKJHLFLKMCM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110110 00111001 101010110 00101011 111011111 1111111 101011110 1111101 011011110 1100101 11101110 1101101 1111111 101001 111111010 01011011 010010111 01001011 011111010 1111101 111011010 0101101 11011111 10111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 800 |
Words | 165 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 632 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 163 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 04, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 2,094 Views
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"When Earth's Last Picture Is Painted" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33642/when-earth%27s-last-picture-is-painted>.
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