Analysis of The Olive
Sydney Thompson Dobell 1824 (Kent) – 1874
I have heard a friar say
That the Olive learned to pray
In Gethsemane,-
A holy man was he,
Jacopo by name,-
All upon his bended knees
From Jerusalem
He crossed Kedron brook
And to the garden came
Of Gethsemane,
And the very olive-trees
Are there to this day.
And I would have you know,
For I loved to hear him speak,
Good Friar Jacopo!-
That on an Easter-week,
In the time long ago
Of bloody Pilate 'King of Rome,'
Lord Jesus
To the garden-gate did come
Of Gethsemane.
And as He came at the dear look
O' the Lord a sudden shudder shook
The wood, and wooden moans and groans
Allowed the silence of the stones.
(The stones that next day, as 'tis said,
Oped their mouths and spake the dead.)
And when He bent His sacred knees
The shame of limbs that could not bend
Suppled every bough's end
To a lythe
And pliant wythe.
But ere He spake a-silent stood
Every tree in all the wood,
And the silence began to fill
Inly, as the ears with blood
When the outer world is still.
And when He spake at the first
'Let this cup' did somewhat swell
Every twig and tip asunder,
Like the silence in the head
When the veins are nigh to burst;
And at the second was nothing seer
To stir, but all the swollen green
Blackened as a cloud with thunder;
But in the final agony,
When His anguish brake its bands
And the bloody sweat down-fell,
At the third 'Let this cup'
As He lifted up His hands
Black drops fell from every tree
And all the forest lifted up.
The Lord went to Calvary-
Well, perhaps, for you and me,
Brother, who being men are fain
To profit by the blessed loss
That quivers overhead while we
At the foot of the cross-mast
With the hereditary face
Reckon up our selfish gain,
Rend his sacred weeds and cast
Lots for the vesture of His grace,-
Aye, at the dabbled foot of the Cross
While that dear blood doth flow.
The Olive cannot chaffer so,
Not being a man, altho'
Since the pallors of that hour
It hath kept a human power
And is not quite a tree;
Now and then
Round the unbelief of men
It lifts up praying hands,
Because it is so much a tree
And cannot tell its tale
Nor reach
To clear its knowledge into speech.
And whether on that awful day
In Gethsemane
There was wind,
Or whether because day and night
And day again all winds that blew
From the City on the height
Shuddered with the things they knew
I know not, but you shall find
An Almighty Memory-
That yearly grows and flowers and fruits
And strikes the blindness of its roots
And suckers forth, but howsoe'er
It blindly beat itself beyond
Its planted first can do no more
Than stretch the measure of its bond
And shape as it had shaped before
The arborous passion that can ne'er
Be paroled into shriving air-
Sicken in the leafy blood
And turn it deadly pale.
And as when a strong malady
Of tertian and quatertian pain,
Turning the cause whence it began
Into the woe of man,
By loops and conduits else too fine
For an incarnadine,
Hath shaken, shaken it from the body into space,
When life and health again co-reign,
And all youth's rosy cheer
Tunes every nerve and summers every vein,
Some crucial habit of the brain
Sudden repeats the unforgotten throe-
Scheme | aaBcdefgdBeabhihjxxfBggkkllemmnnoopqprstlrxbtbusiuci ccbvcwxbwxvjjnttcbbucyzzaB1 2 x2 b1 c3 3 t4 5 4 5 6 6 qycbbbbbxbxbbt |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110101 1010111 01 010111 111 1011101 10100 1111 010101 11 0010101 11111 011111 1111111 1101 111101 001101 1101111 110 1010111 11 01111011 101010101 01010101 01010101 01111111 1110101 01111101 01111111 110011 101 0101 11110101 10010101 00100111 110111 1010111 0111101 1111111 100101010 1010001 1011111 010101101 11110101 10101110 10010100 1110111 0010111 101111 1110111 11111001 01010101 0111100 1011101 10110111 1101011 1110111 1011011 1001001 10110101 1110101 1101111 110101101 111111 0101011 110011 1011110 11101010 011101 101 10111 111101 01111101 010111 11 11110011 01011101 01 111 11001101 01011111 1010101 1010111 1111111 1010100 110101001 01010111 010111 11010101 11011111 11010111 01111101 0110111 1010111 1000101 011101 01101100 11011 10011101 010111 110100111 111 1101011010011 11010111 011101 110010101001 11010101 1001011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 3,009 |
Words | 599 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 52, 56 |
Lines Amount | 108 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,219 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 296 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:00 min read
- 45 Views
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"The Olive" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/35944/the-olive>.
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