Analysis of Octaves
We thrill too strangely at the master’s touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel—
We dare not feel it yet—the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God’s accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand.
Tumultously void of a clean scheme
Whereon to build, whereof to formulate,
The legion life that riots in mankind
Goes ever plunging upward, up and down,
Most like some crazy regiment at arms,
Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance,
And ever led resourcelessly along
To brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.
To me the groaning of world-worshippers
Rings like a lonely music played in hell
By one with art enough to cleave the walls
Of heaven with his cadence, but without
The wisdom or the will to comprehend
The strangeness of his own perversity,
And all without the courage to deny
The profit and the pride of his defeat.
While we are drilled in error, we are lost
Alike to truth and usefulness. We think
We are great warriors now, and we can brag
Like Titans; but the world is growing young,
And we, the fools of time, are growing with it:—
We do not fight to-day, we only die;
We are too proud of death, and too ashamed
Of God, to know enough to be alive.
There is one battle-field whereon we fall
Triumphant and unconquered; but, alas!
We are too fleshly fearful of ourselves
To fight there till our days are whirled and blurred
By sorrow, and the ministering wheels
Of anguish take us eastward, where the clouds
Of human gloom are lost against the gleam
That shines on Thought’s impenetrable mail.
When we shall hear no more the cradle-songs
Of ages—when the timeless hymns of Love
Defeat them and outsound them—we shall know
The rapture of that large release which all
Right science comprehends; and we shall read,
With unoppressed and unoffended eyes,
That record of All-Soul whereon God writes
In everlasting runes the truth of Him.
The guerdon of new childhood is repose:—
Once he has read the primer of right thought,
A man may claim between two smithy strokes
Beatitude enough to realize
God’s parallel completeness in the vague
And incommensurable excellence
That equitably uncreates itself
And makes a whirlwind of the Universe.
There is no loneliness:—no matter where
We go, nor whence we come, nor what good friends
Forsake us in the seeming, we are all
At one with a complete companionship;
And though forlornly joyless be the ways
We travel, the compensate spirit-gleams
Of Wisdom shaft the darkness here and there,
Like scattered lamps in unfrequented streets.
When one that you and I had all but sworn
To be the purest thing God ever made
Bewilders us until at last it seems
An angel has come back restigmatized,—
Faith wavers, and we wonder what there is
On earth to make us faithful any more,
But never are quite wise enough to know
The wisdom that is in that wonderment.
Where does a dead man go?—The dead man dies;
But the free life that would no longer feed
On fagots of outburned and shattered flesh
Wakes to a thrilled invisible advance,
Unchained (or fettered else) of memory;
And when the dead man goes it seems to me
’T were better for us all to do away
With weeping, and be glad that he is gone.
Still through the dusk of dead, blank-legended,
And unremunerative years we search
To get where life begins, and still we groan
Because we do not find the living spark
Where no spark ever was; and thus we die,
Still searching, like poor old astronomers
Who totter off to bed and go to sleep,
To dream of untriangulated stars.
With conscious eyes not yet sincere enough
To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates
Between me and the glorifying light
That screens itself with knowledge, I discern
The searching rays of wisdom that reach through
The mist of shame’s infirm credulity,
And infinitely wonder if hard words
Like mine have any message for the dead.
I grant you friendship is a royal thing,
But none shall ever know that royalty
For what it is till he has realized
His best friend in himself. ’T is then, perforce,
That man’s unfette
Scheme | XABXXCDX EXXXBBXB BXBXXFGX XXXXXGXX HBBXBBEX BXIHJBBX BXBBXBAB KBHXBBKB XXBCBXID BXXBFFXX CXXXGBXB XBXXXFBJ XFXBC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111010101 1111010101 11110101 0111111 1111110101 1110101 0111110100 110010011 111011 1111110 0101110011 1101010101 1111010011 0100111100 0101101 11010111 1101011100 1101010101 1111011101 1101110101 010101101 0101110100 0101010101 0100011101 1111010111 0111010011 11110010111 1101011101 01011111011 1111111101 1111110101 1111011101 111101111 01001101 1111101001 11111011101 110001001 1101110101 1101110101 1111010001 1111110101 1101010111 011011111 0101110111 110010111 11011 101111111 001010111 01111101 1111010111 011101111 101110 110010001 01100 11000101 01011010 1111001101 1111111111 0110010111 111001010 0111101 110010101 1101010101 1101011 1111011111 1101011101 0101011111 1101111 110110111 1111110101 1101110111 0101101100 1101110111 1011111101 11110101 1101010001 111011100 0101111111 10101111101 1100111111 11011111 01111 1111010111 0111110101 1111010111 1101110100 1101110111 11111 1101110101 11011110 011001001 1101110101 0101110111 0111010100 0100010111 1111010101 1111010101 1111011100 111111110 11100111101 111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,134 |
Words | 740 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 5 |
Lines Amount | 101 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 251 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 56 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:42 min read
- 69 Views
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"Octaves" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10010/octaves>.
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