Analysis of Isaac and Archibald
(To Mrs. Henry Richards)
Isaac and Archibald were two old men.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them
A little; but I must have honored them
For they were old, and they were good to me.
I do not think of either of them now,
Without remembering, infallibly,
A journey that I made one afternoon
With Isaac to find out what Archibald
Was doing with his oats. It was high time
Those oats were cut, said Isaac; and he feared
That Archibald—well, he could never feel
Quite sure of Archibald. Accordingly
The good old man invited me—that is,
Permitted me—to go along with him;
And I, with a small boy’s adhesiveness
To competent old age, got up and went.
I do not know that I cared overmuch
For Archibald’s or anybody’s oats,
But Archibald was quite another thing,
And Isaac yet another; and the world
Was wide, and there was gladness everywhere.
We walked together down the River Road
With all the warmth and wonder of the land
Around us, and the wayside flash of leaves,—
And Isaac said the day was glorious;
But somewhere at the end of the first mile
I found that I was figuring to find
How long those ancient legs of his would keep
The pace that he had set for them. The sun
Was hot, and I was ready to sweat blood;
But Isaac, for aught I could make of him,
Was cool to his hat-band. So I said then
With a dry gasp of affable despair,
Something about the scorching days we have
In August without knowing it sometimes;
But Isaac said the day was like a dream,
And praised the Lord, and talked about the breeze.
I made a fair confession of the breeze,
And crowded casually on his thought
The nearness of a profitable nook
That I could see. First I was half inclined
To caution him that he was growing old,
But something that was not compassion soon
Made plain the folly of all subterfuge.
Isaac was old, but not so old as that.
So I proposed, without an overture,
That we be seated in the shade a while,
And Isaac made no murmur. Soon the talk
Was turned on Archibald, and I began
To feel some premonitions of a kind
That only childhood knows; for the old man
Had looked at me and clutched me with his eye,
And asked if I had ever noticed things.
I told him that I could not think of them,
And I knew then, by the frown that left his face
Unsatisfied, that I had injured him.
“My good young friend,” he said, “you cannot feel
What I have seen so long. You have the eyes—
Oh, yes—but you have not the other things:
The sight within that never will deceive,
You do not know—you have no right to know;
The twilight warning of experience,
The singular idea of loneliness,—
These are not yours. But they have long been mine,
And they have shown me now for seven years
That Archibald is changing. It is not
So much that he should come to his last hand,
And leave the game, and go the old way down;
But I have known him in and out so long,
And I have seen so much of good in him
That other men have shared and have not seen,
And I have gone so far through thick and thin,
Through cold and fire with him, that now it brings
To this old heart of mine an ache that you
Have not yet lived enough to know about.
But even unto you, and your boy’s faith,
Your freedom, and your untried confidence,
A time will come to find out what it means
To know that you are losing what was yours,
To know that you are being left behind;
And then the long contempt of innocence—
God bless you, boy!—don’t think the worse of it
Because an old man chatters in the shade—
Will all be like a story you have read
In childhood and remembered for the pictures.
And when the best friend of your life goes down,
When first you know in him the slackening
That comes, and coming always tells the end,—
Now in a common word that would have passed
Uncaught from any other lips than his,
Now in some trivial act of every day,
Done as he might have done it all along
But for a twinging little difference
That nips you like a squirrel’s teeth—oh, yes,
Then you will understand it well enough.
But oftener it comes in other ways;
It comes without your knowing when it comes;
You know that he is changing, and you know
That he is going—just as I know now
That Archibald is going, and that I
Am staying.… Look at me, my boy,
And when the time shall come for you to see
That I must follow after him, try then
To think of me, to bring me back again,
Just as I was to-day. Think of the place
Where we
Scheme | A BCCD EFGXXXFDHIAX XXJXKXLXMFNXXXIBKXXXOOXXNXGXX XFXPNPQRCSIFXRXTUMXXXLVWIXXRXXXUXXNUXXXX VJXXHXWUXXXXTEQXDBBSD |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101010 100100111 1110111111 0101111101 1101010111 1111110111 0101001 010111101 110111110 1101111111 1101110011 110111101 111100100 0111010111 0101110111 0110111 1100111101 11111111 11111 110110101 0101010001 11011110 1101010101 1101010101 011001111 0101011100 111011011 1111110011 1111011111 0111111101 1101110111 1101111111 1111111111 1011110001 1001010111 0100110101 1101011101 0101010101 1101010101 0101000111 011010001 1111111101 1101111101 1101110101 110101110 1011111111 1101011100 1111000101 0101110101 111100101 1110010101 110111011 1111011111 0111110101 1111111111 01111011111 010111101 1111111101 1111111101 1111110101 0101110101 1111111111 011010100 01000101100 1111111111 0111111101 110110111 1111111111 0101010111 1111100111 0111111101 1101110111 0111111101 11010111111 1111111111 1111011101 1101010111 1100101100 0111111111 1111110111 1111110101 0101011100 1111110111 011111001 1111010111 0100101010 0101111111 1111010100 110101101 1001011111 111010111 101100111001 1111111101 110110100 1111010111 111011101 1100110101 1101110111 1111110011 1111011111 110110011 11011111 0101111111 1111010111 1111111101 1111111101 11 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,376 |
Words | 854 |
Sentences | 26 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 4, 12, 29, 40, 21 |
Lines Amount | 107 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 562 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 141 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 4:16 min read
- 279 Views
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"Isaac and Archibald" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 8 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9983/isaac-and-archibald>.
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