Analysis of Human Life
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 (Ottery St Mary) – 1834 (Highgate)
If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being ! If the breath
Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death ;
O Man ! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !
Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously.
Blank accident ! nothing's anomaly !
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights !--Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create
And to repay the other ! Why rejoices
Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good ?
Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood ?
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,
Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf,
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold ?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self ?
Be sad ! be glad ! be neither ! seek, or shun !
Thou hast no reason why ! Thou canst have none ;
Thy being's being is contradiction.
Scheme | ABABCDCDEFGHFFIJKIELLEMNNMOOO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111111101 1011111111 1101110101 1101010101 1111110101 1101011101 1100111111 111101001 1111110100 1011010100 1111111101 010111001 111101100 1100100100 11011111 1111011111 0101110011 1101110101 010101011 1111011101 111101011 11110101010 1011011101 11011111111 1101111101 111111001 1111110111 1111011111 110101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,321 |
Words | 219 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 29 |
Lines Amount | 29 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 986 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 235 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 1:07 min read
- 387 Views
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"Human Life" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/34257/human-life>.
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