Analysis of To Belloc
Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 (Kensington, London) – 1936 (Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire)
For every tiny town or place
God made the stars especially;
Babies look up with owlish face
And see them tangled in a tree;
You saw a moon from Sussex Downs,
A Sussex moon, untravelled still,
I saw a moon that was the town's,
The largest lamp on Campden Hill.
Yea; Heaven is everywhere at home
The big blue cap that always fits,
And so it is (be calm; they come
To goal at last, my wandering wits),
So is it with the heroic thing;
This shall not end for the world's end
And though the sullen engines swing,
Be you not much afraid, my friend.
This did not end by Nelson's urn
Where an immortal England sits--
Nor where your tall young men in turn
Drank death like wine at Austerlitz.
And when the pedants bade us mark
What cold mechanic happenings
Must come; our souls said in the dark,
'Belike; but there are likelier things.'
Likelier across these flats afar
These sulky levels smooth and free
The drums shall crash a waltz of war
And Death shall dance with Liberty;
Likelier the barricades shall blare
Slaughter below and smoke above,
And death and hate and hell declare
That men have found a thing to love.
Far from your sunny uplands set
I saw the dream; the streets I trod
The lit straight streets shot out and met
The starry streets that point to God.
This legend of an epic hour
A child I dreamed, and dream it still,
Under the great grey water-tower
That strikes the stars on Campden Hill
Scheme | ABABCDCD XEXEFGFG HEHAIJIJ XBXBKLKL MNMNODOD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (28%) |
Metre | 110010111 1101010 1011111 01110001 11011101 010111 11011101 0101111 11011011 0111111 01111111 111111001 111100101 11111011 01010101 11110111 11111101 11010101 11111101 111111 0101111 11010100 111011001 11111001 100011101 1110101 01110111 01111100 10001011 10010101 01010101 11110111 11110101 11010111 01111101 01011111 110111010 01110111 100111010 1101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,365 |
Words | 265 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 219 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 52 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:20 min read
- 80 Views
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"To Belloc" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/16033/to-belloc>.
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