Analysis of An Elective Course
Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1836 (Portsmouth) – 1907 (Boston)
LINES FOUND AMONG THE PAPERS OF A HARVARD UNDERGRADUATE
The bloom that lies on Fanny's cheek
Is all my Latin, all my Greek;
The only sciences I know
Are frowns that gloom and smiles that glow;
Siberia and Italy
Lie in her sweet geography;
No scolarship have I but such
As teaches me to love her much.
Why should I strive to read the skies,
Who know the midnight of her eyes?
Why should I go so very far
To learn what heavenly bodies are!
Not Berenice's starry hair
With Fanny's tresses can compare;
Not Venus on a cloudless night,
Enslaving Science with her light,
Ever reveals so much as when
She stares and droops her lids again.
If Nature's secrets are forbidden
To mortals, she may keep them hidden.
Æons and æons we progressed
And did not let that break our rest;
Little we cared if Mars o'erhead
Were or were not inhabited;
Without the aid of Saturn's rings
Fair girls were wived in those fair springs;
Warm lips met ours, and conquered us
Or ere thou wert, Copernicus!
Graybeards, who wish to bridge the chasm
'Twixt man to-day and protoplasm,
Who theorize and probe and gape,
And finally evolve an ape--
Yours is a harmless sort of cult,
If you are pleased with the result.
Some folks admit, with cynic grace,
That you have rather proved your case.
Those dogmatists are so severe!
Enough for me that Fanny's here,
Enough that, having survived
Pre-Eveic forms, she has arrived--
An illustration the completest
Of the survival of the sweetest.
Linnæus aveunt! I only care
To know what flower she wants to wear.
I leave it to the addle-pated
To guess how pinks originated,
As if it mattered! The chief thing
Is that we have them in the Spring,
And Fanny likes them. When they come,
I straightaway send and purchase some.
The Origin of Plants--go to!
Their proper end I have in view.
O loveliest book that ever man
Looked into since the world began
Is Woman! As I turn those pages,
As fresh as in the primal ages,
As day by day I scan, perplext,
The ever subtly changing text,
I feel that I am slowly growing
To think no other work worth knowing.
And in my copy--there is none
So perfect as the one I own--
I find no thing set down as such
As teaches me to love it much.
Scheme | A BBCCDDEE FFGGHHIIJJ KKLLAMNNOO PPQQRRSSXXTTAX HHAMUUPPVV WWXXAXUUKXEE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110101010100100 0111111 11110111 01010011 11110111 01000100 10010100 111111 11011101 11111101 1101101 11111101 111100101 11101 1110101 11010101 110101 10011111 11010101 110101100 110111110 101101 011111101 1011111 01010100 01011101 11010111 111100101 11110100 101111010 111101 1100101 01000111 11010111 11111001 11011101 11110111 111101 0111111 0111001 1111101 101001 100101010 1111101 111101111 11110101 11110100 11110011 11111001 01011111 11010101 01001111 11011101 1111101 10110101 110111110 111001010 1111111 010100101 111111010 111101110 00110111 10110111 11111111 11011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,180 |
Words | 406 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 8, 10, 10, 14, 10, 12 |
Lines Amount | 65 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 242 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 58 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:04 min read
- 102 Views
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"An Elective Course" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36015/an-elective-course>.
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