Analysis of Tyranny.



'Spring-germs, spring-germs,
I charge you by your life, go back to death.
This glebe is sick, this wind is foul of breath.
Stay: feed the worms.

'Oh! every clod
Is faint, and falters from the war of growth
And crumbles in a dreary dust of sloth,
Unploughed, untrod.

'What need, what need,
To hide with flowers the curse upon the hills,
Or sanctify the banks of sluggish rills
Where vapors breed?

'And -- if needs must --
Advance, O Summer-heats! upon the land,
And bake the bloody mould to shards and sand
And dust.

'Before your birth,
Burn up, O Roses! with your dainty flame.
Good Violets, sweet Violets, hide shame
Below the earth.

'Ye silent Mills,
Reject the bitter kindness of the moss.
O Farms! protest if any tree emboss
The barren hills.

'Young Trade is dead,
And swart Work sullen sits in the hillside fern
And folds his arms that find no bread to earn,
And bows his head.

'Spring-germs, spring-germs,
Albeit the towns have left you place to play,
I charge you, sport not. Winter owns to-day,
Stay: feed the worms.'


Scheme AbbA cddc ceac cccc fggf ehhe ciic AxcA
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 1111 1111111111 1111111111 1101 11001 1101010111 0100010111 11 1111 11110010101 1100011101 1101 0111 0111010101 0101011101 01 0111 1111011101 1100110011 0101 1101 0101010101 111110101 0101 1111 0111010011 0111111111 0111 1111 01001111111 1111110111 1101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,002
Words 187
Sentences 18
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 98
Words per stanza (avg) 23
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

55 sec read
29

Sidney Lanier

Sidney Lanier was a poet, writer, composer, critic, professor of literature at Johns Hopkins and first flutist with the Peabody Symphony Orchestra in Baltiimore. He wrote the Centennial cantata for the opening ceremony of the 1876 Centennial celebration in Philadelphia. more…

All Sidney Lanier poems | Sidney Lanier Books

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