Analysis of A Father To His Son
Carl Sandburg 1878 (Galesburg) – 1967 (Flat Rock)
A father sees his son nearing manhood.
What shall he tell that son?
'Life is hard; be steel; be a rock.'
And this might stand him for the storms
and serve him for humdrum monotony
and guide him among sudden betrayals
and tighten him for slack moments.
'Life is a soft loam; be gentle; go easy.'
And this too might serve him.
Brutes have been gentled where lashes failed.
The growth of a frail flower in a path up
has sometimes shattered and split a rock.
A tough will counts. So does desire.
So does a rich soft wanting.
Without rich wanting nothing arrives.
Tell him too much money has killed men
and left them dead years before burial:
the quest of lucre beyond a few easy needs
has twisted good enough men
sometimes into dry thwarted worms.
Tell him time as a stuff can be wasted.
Tell him to be a fool every so often
and to have no shame over having been a fool
yet learning something out of every folly
hoping to repeat none of the cheap follies
thus arriving at intimate understanding
of a world numbering many fools.
Tell him to be alone often and get at himself
and above all tell himself no lies about himself
whatever the white lies and protective fronts
he may use against other people.
Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own.
Scheme | ABCDEFGEHIJCKLMNOPNQRBSETLUVVGOWXOYZO1 2 3 4 5 6 7 |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010111101 111111 11111101 01111101 011110100 0110110010 01011110 11011110110 011111 11111101 01101100011 101100101 011111010 1101110 011101001 111110111 0111101100 01110101101 1101011 01011101 1111011110 111101100110 011111010101 110101110010 10101110110 10101100010 101100101 1111011001101 0011101110101 1001100101 111011010 111010101111 0010010110101 111110011010 11110001010100 1111011011010 111111111100 111011 001100110 1010010010 101001010101 1111001 111101 11111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,683 |
Words | 320 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 44 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,367 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 316 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 27, 2023
- 1:35 min read
- 497 Views
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