Analysis of Thoughts On The Shape Of The Human Body
Rupert Brooke 1887 (Rugby) – 1915 (Aegean Sea)
How can we find? how can we rest? how can
We, being gods, win joy, or peace, being man?
We, the gaunt zanies of a witless Fate,
Who love the unloving and lover hate,
Forget the moment ere the moment slips,
Kiss with blind lips that seek beyond the lips,
Who want, and know not what we want, and cry
With crooked mouths for Heaven, and throw it by.
Love's for completeness! No perfection grows
'Twixt leg, and arm, elbow, and ear, and nose,
And joint, and socket; but unsatisfied
Sprawling desires, shapeless, perverse, denied.
Finger with finger wreathes; we love, and gape,
Fantastic shape to mazed fantastic shape,
Straggling, irregular, perplexed, embossed,
Grotesquely twined, extravagantly lost
By crescive paths and strange protuberant ways
From sanity and from wholeness and from grace.
How can love triumph, how can solace be,
Where fever turns toward fever, knee toward knee?
Could we but fill to harmony, and dwell
Simple as our thought and as perfectible,
Rise disentangled from humanity
Strange whole and new into simplicity,
Grow to a radiant round love, and bear
Unfluctuant passion for some perfect sphere,
Love moon to moon unquestioning, and be
Like the star Lunisequa, steadfastly
Following the round clear orb of her delight,
Patiently ever, through the eternal night!
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIJKKLLKKMNKKOO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1111111111 11011111101 101110101 11010101 0101010101 1111110101 1101111101 11011100111 1101010101 110110101 010101010 10010100101 1011011101 0101110101 101000101 010110001 1110111 11000110011 1111011101 110101101011 1111110001 101101011 1110100 1101010100 1101001101 11011011 1111010001 101110 10001111001 10010100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,267 |
Words | 215 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 30 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,021 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 214 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:04 min read
- 67 Views
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"Thoughts On The Shape Of The Human Body" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 16 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33756/thoughts-on-the-shape-of-the-human-body>.
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