Analysis of A Portrait Of 1783
Andrew Lang 1844 (Selkirk, Scottish Borders) – 1912 (Banchory)
Your hair and chin are like the hair
And chin Burne-Jones's ladies wear;
You were unfashionably fair
In '83;
And sad you were when girls are gay,
You read a book about Le vrai
Merite de l'homme, alone in May.
What CAN it be,
Le vrai merite de l'homme? Not gold,
Not titles that are bought and sold,
Not wit that flashes and is cold,
But Virtue merely!
Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know),
You bade the crowd of foplings go,
You glanced severely,
Dreaming beneath the spreading shade
Of 'that vast hat the Graces made;'
So Rouget sang--while yet he played
With courtly rhyme,
And hymned great Doisi's red perruque,
And Nice's eyes, and Zulme's look,
And dead canaries, ere he shook
The sultry time
With strains like thunder. Loud and low
Methinks I hear the murmur grow,
The tramp of men that come and go
With fire and sword.
They war against the quick and dead,
Their flying feet are dashed with red,
As theirs the vintaging that tread
Before the Lord.
O head unfashionably fair,
What end was thine, for all thy care?
We only see thee dreaming there:
We cannot see
The breaking of thy vision, when
The Rights of Man were lords of men,
When virtue won her own again
In '93.
Scheme | AAABCACDEEEDFFFDGGGHCIIHFFFJKKKJAAADLLLB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (33%) Tetractys (28%) |
Metre | 11011101 01110101 1011 0 01101111 11010101 11110101 1111 01111111 11011101 11110011 11010 01011101 01110111 1101111 11010 10010101 11110101 1111111 1101 011111 011011 01010111 0101 11110101 1110101 01111101 11001 11010101 11011111 110111 0101 1111 11111111 11011101 1101 01011101 01110111 11010101 0 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,183 |
Words | 224 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 40 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 942 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 221 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 34 Views
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