Analysis of The Philosopher
Clive Staples Lewis 1898 (Clive Staples Lewis Belfast) – 1963 (Oxford)
Who shall be our prophet then,
Chosen from all the sons of men
To lead his fellows on the way
Of hidden knowledge, delving deep
To nameless mysteries that keep
Their secret from the solar day!
Or who shall pierce with surer eye!
This shifting veil of bittersweet
And find the real things that lie
Beyond this turmoil, which we greet
With such a wasted wealth of tears?
Who shall cross over for us the bridge of fears
And pass in to the country where the ancient Mothers dwell?
Is it an elder, bent and hoar
Who, where the waste Atlantic swell
On lonely beaches makes its roar,
In his solitary tower
Through the long night hour by hour
Pores on old books with watery eye
When all his youth has passed him by,
And folly is schooled and love is dead
And frozen fancy laid abed,
While in his veins the gradual blood
Slackens to a marish flood?
For he rejoiceth not in the ocean's might,
Neither the sun giveth delight,
Nor the moon by night
Shall call his feet to wander in the haunted forest lawn.
He shall no more rise suddenly in the dawn
When mists are white and the dew lies pearly
Cold and cold on every meadow,
To take his joy of the season early,
The opening flower and the westward shadow,
And scarcely can he dream of laughter and love,
They lie so many leaden years behind.
Such eyes are dim and blind,
And the sad, aching head that nods above
His monstrous books can never know
The secret we would find.
But let our seer be young and kind
And fresh and beautiful of show,
And taken ere the lustyhead
And rapture of his youth be dead;
Ere the gnawing, peasant reason
School him over-deep in treason
To the ancient high estate
Of his fancy's principate,
That he may live a perfect whole,
A mask of the eternal soul,
And cross at last the shadowy bar
To where the ever-living are.
Scheme | AABCCBDEDEFGHIHIJJDDKKLLMMMNNOPOPQRRQPRRPEKSSTEUUVV |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110101 10110111 11110101 11010101 11010011 11010101 11111101 1101110 0101111 0111111 11010111 11110110111 01010101010101 11110101 11010101 11010111 0110010 101110110 111111001 11111111 010110111 01010101 101101001 1010101 111100101 10011001 10111 11111100010101 11111100001 1111001110 10111001 1111101010 01001000101 01011111001 1111010101 111101 0011011101 11011101 010111 111011101 01010011 010101 01011111 10101010 11101010 1010101 1111 11110011 01100101 011101001 11010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,743 |
Words | 340 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 51 |
Lines Amount | 51 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,413 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 338 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:42 min read
- 37 Views
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