Analysis of Necrological
John Crowe Ransom 1888 (Pulaski) – 1974 (Gambier)
The friar had said his paternosters duly
And scourged his limbs, and afterwards would have slept;
But with much riddling his head became unruly,
He arose, from the quiet monastery he crept.
Dawn lightened the place where the battle had been won.
The people were dead -- it is easy he thought to die --
These dead remained, but the living were all gone,
Gone with the wailing trumps of victory.
The dead men wore no raiment against the air,
Bartholomew's men had spoiled them where they fell;
In defeat the heroes' bodies were whitely bare,
The field was white like meads of asphodel.
Not all were white; some gory and fabulous
Whom the sword had pierced and then the grey wolf eaten;
But the brother reasoned that heroes' flesh was thus.
Flesh fails, and the postured bones lie weather-beaten.
The lords of chivalry lay prone and shattered.
The gentle and the bodyguard of yeomen;
Bartholomew's stroke went home -- but little it mattered,
Bartholomew went to be stricken of other foemen.
Beneath the blue ogive of the firmament
Was a dead warrior, clutching whose mighty knees
Was a leman, who with her flame had warmed his tent,
For him enduring all men's pleasantries.
Close by the sable stream that purged the plain
Lay the white stallion and his rider thrown,
The great beast had spilled there his little brain,
And the little groin of the knight was spilled by a stone.
The youth possessed him then of a crooked blade
Deep in the belly of a lugubrious wight;
He fingered it well, and it was cunningly made;
But strange apparatus was if for a Carmelite.
Then he sat upon a hill and bowed his head
As under a riddle, and in deep surmise
So still that he likened himself unto those dead
Whom the kites of Heaven solicited with sweet cries.
Scheme | ABAB CXXA DXDA ECEC FCFC BGXG HIHI JKJK LMLM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (89%) |
Metre | 010111110 01110100111 11111101010 101101010011 110011010111 0100111101111 11011010011 1101011100 0111110101 11111111 001010100101 01111111 11011100100 101110101110 101010110111 11001111010 01110011010 010001011 1111110110 010111101101 01011101 101100101101 101011011111 1101011100 1101011101 1011001101 0111111101 0010110111101 01011110101 100101001001 1101101111 11010111010 11101010111 11001000101 111110011011 1011100100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,749 |
Words | 314 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 154 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 35 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:35 min read
- 63 Views
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"Necrological" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22395/necrological>.
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