Analysis of Robert Fulton Tanner
Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)
If a man could bite the giant hand
That catches and destroys him,
As I was bitten by a rat
While demonstrating my patent trap,
In my hardware store that day.
But a man can never avenge himself
On the monstrous ogre Life.
You enter the room--that's being born;
And then you must live--work out your soul,
Aha! the bait that you crave is in view:
A woman with money you want to marry,
Prestige, place, or power in the world.
But there's work to do and things to conquer--
Oh, yes! the wires that screen the bait.
At last you get in--but you hear a step:
The ogre, Life, comes into the room,
(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)
To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,
And stare with his burning eyes at you,
And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,
Running up and down in the trap,
Until your misery bores him.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRJJDB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101110101 1100011 11110101 11001101 011111 1011100101 1010101 110011101 011111111 101111101 01011011110 011110001 1111101110 110101101 1111011101 010110101 11100101101 111100101 011110111 010101011 10101001 01110011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 835 |
Words | 162 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 22 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 631 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 160 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 27, 2023
- 49 sec read
- 133 Views
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"Robert Fulton Tanner" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/8699/robert-fulton-tanner>.
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