Analysis of Long Odds
How many million galaxies there are
Who knows? and each has countless stars in it,
And each rolls through eternities afar
Beneath the threshold of the Infinite.
How is it that will all that space to roam
I should have found this mote that spins and leaps
In what unutterable sunlight, foam
Of what unfathomable starry deeps
Who knows!? And how this thousand million souls
And half a thousand million souls of earth
That swarm, all bound for unimagined goals,
All pioneers of death enrolled at birth,
How were they swept away before my sight,
That I might stand upon the single prick
Of infinite space and time as infinite,
Who knows? Yet here I stand, climacteric,
Having found you. Was it by fall of chance?
Then what a stake against what odds I have won!
Was it determined in God's ordinance?
Then wondrous love and pity for His son!
Or was it part of an eternal law?
Then how ineffably beneficent!
Each thought excites an ecstasy of awe,
A rapture rending the mind's firmament.
Infinity -yet you and I have met.
Eternity -yet hand in hand we run.
All odds that I should lose you or forget,
But, soul and spirit and body, we are one.
Is this the child of Chance, or Law, or Will?
Is None or All or One to thank for this?
It will not matter if thanksgiving fill
The endless empyrean with a kiss.
Scheme | ABAC DEDE FGFG XHCH XIXI XXXB JIJI KLKL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (88%) |
Metre | 1101010011 1101110101 0111101 010110100 1111111111 1111111101 01111 1101000101 1101110101 0101010111 111110101 101110111 1011010111 1111010101 11001011100 1111111 1011111111 11010111111 1101001100 1101010111 1111110101 111010 1101110011 01010011 0100110111 0100110111 1111111101 11010010111 1101111111 1111111111 111101101 0101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,274 |
Words | 242 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 127 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 92 Views
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"Long Odds" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/381/long-odds>.
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