Analysis of On the Building of Springfield
Let not our town be large, remembering
That little Athens was the Muses' home,
That Oxford rules the heart of London still,
That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome.
Record it for the grandson of your son —
A city is not builded in a day:
Our little town cannot complete her soul
Till countless generations pass away.
Now let each child be joined as to a church
To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained:
Let every street be made a reverent aisle
Where Music grows and Beauty is unchained.
Let Science and Machinery and Trade
Be slaves of her, and make her all in all,
Building against our blatant, restless time
An unseen, skilful, medieval wall.
Let every citizen be rich toward God.
Let Christ the beggar, teach divinity.
Let no man rule who holds his money dear.
Let this, our city, be our luxury.
We should build parks that students from afar
Would choose to starve in, rather than go home,
Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament,
Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb.
Songs shall be sung by us in that good day,
Songs we have written, blood within the rhyme
Beating, as when Old England still was glad, —
The purple, rich Elizabethan time.
Say, is my prophecy too fair and far?
I only know, unless her faith be high,
The soul of this, our Nineveh, is doomed,
Our little Babylon will surely die.
Some city on the breast of Illinois
No wiser and no better at the start
By faith shall rise redeemed, by faith shall rise
Bearing the western glory in her heart.
The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak,
The secret hidden in each grain of corn,
The glory that the prairie angels sing
At night when sons of Life and Love are born,
Born but to struggle, squalid and alone,
Broken and wandering in their early years.
When will they make our dusty streets their goal,
Within our attics hide their sacred tears?
When will they start our vulgar blood athrill
With living language, words that set us free?
When will they make a path of beauty clear
Between our riches and our liberty?
We must have many Lincoln-hearted men.
A city is not builded in a day.
And they must do their work, and come and go
While countless generations pass away.
Scheme | abcb xDed xxxd xfgf xhih jbxb dgxg jkxk xlxl xmam xxex chih xDxd |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (92%) |
Metre | 11101110100 1101010101 1101011101 110100111 011101111 010111001 10101100101 110010101 1111111101 10010011101 110011101001 110101011 1100010001 1110010101 10011010101 10110101 110010011011 1101010100 1111111101 111010110100 1111110101 1111010111 110111100 110101010 1111110111 1111010101 1011110111 010100101 1111001101 1101010111 01111010011 1010101101 110101101 1100110101 1111011111 1001010001 0101010101 0101001111 0101010101 1111110111 1111010001 10010001101 11111010111 01101011101 1111101011 1101011111 1111011101 011010010100 1111010101 010111001 0111110101 110010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,150 |
Words | 394 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 52 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 129 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 09, 2023
- 1:58 min read
- 147 Views
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"On the Building of Springfield" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/37319/on-the-building-of-springfield>.
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