Analysis of On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People
Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844 (Stratford, London) – 1889 (Dublin)
A Brother and Sister
O I admire and sorrow! The heart’s eye grieves
Discovering you, dark tramplers, tyrant years.
A juice rides rich through bluebells, in vine leaves,
And beauty’s dearest veriest vein is tears.
Happy the father, mother of these! Too fast:
Not that, but thus far, all with frailty, blest
In one fair fall; but, for time’s aftercast,
Creatures all heft, hope, hazard, interest.
And are they thus? The fine, the fingering beams
Their young delightful hour do feature down
That fleeted else like day-dissolvèd dreams
Or ringlet-race on burling Barrow brown.
She leans on him with such contentment fond
As well the sister sits, would well the wife;
His looks, the soul’s own letters, see beyond,
Gaze on, and fall directly forth on life.
But ah, bright forelock, cluster that you are
Of favoured make and mind and health and youth,
Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul’s star?
There’s none but truth can stead you. Christ is truth.
There ’s none but good can bé good, both for you
And what sways with you, maybe this sweet maid;
None good but God—a warning wavèd to
One once that was found wanting when Good weighed.
Man lives that list, that leaning in the will
No wisdom can forecast by gauge or guess,
The selfless self of self, most strange, most still,
Fast furled and all foredrawn to No or Yes.
Your feast of; that most in you earnest eye
May but call on your banes to more carouse.
Worst will the best. What worm was here, we cry,
To have havoc-pocked so, see, the hung-heavenward boughs?
Enough: corruption was the world’s first woe.
What need I strain my heart beyond my ken?
O but I bear my burning witness though
Against the wild and wanton work of men.
. . . . . . .
Scheme | X AXAX BXBX CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KLKL MNMN OPOP |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 010010 11010100111 0100111101 011111011 01101111 10010101111 1111111101 01111111 101111010 01110101001 11010101101 11111111 111110101 1111110101 1101011101 1101110101 1101010111 111110111 111010101 11111111 1111111111 11111111111 0111110111 1111010111 1111110111 1111110001 110111111 0101111111 110111111 1111101101 1111111101 1101111111 11101110111 0101010111 1111110111 1111110101 0101010111 1 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,717 |
Words | 303 |
Sentences | 27 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5 |
Lines Amount | 38 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 131 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 136 Views
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