Analysis of Baccalaureate
Archibald MacLeish 1892 (Glencoe) – 1982 (Boston)
A year or two, and grey Euripides,
And Horace and a Lydia or so,
And Euclid and the brush of Angelo,
Darwin on man, Vergilius on bees,
The nose and Dialogues of Socrates,
Don Quixote, Hudibras and Trinculo,
How worlds are spawned and where the dead gods go,--
All shall be shard of broken memories.
And there shall linger other, magic things,--
The fog that creeps in wanly from the sea,
The rotton harbor smell, the mystery
Of moonlit elms, the flash of pigeon wings,
The sunny Green, the old-world peace that clings
About the college yard, where endlessly
The dead go up and down. These things shall be
Enchantment of our heart's rememberings.
And these are more than memories of youth
Which earth's four winds of pain shall blow away;
These are earth's symbols of eternal truth,
Symbols of dream and imagery and flame,
Symbols of those same verities that play
Bright through the crumbling gold of a great name.
Scheme | AABAABBA AACAACCA DEDFEF |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111011 0100010011 010001110 1011111 01010110 1010101 1111010111 1111110100 0111010101 011101101 011010100 111011101 0101011111 0101011100 0111011111 01011011 0111110011 1111111101 1111010101 1011010001 1011110011 11010011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 919 |
Words | 165 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 240 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 54 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 50 sec read
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