Analysis of The Answer
Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) – 1936 (London)
A Rose, in tatters on the garden path,
Cried out to God and murmured 'gainst His Wrath,
Because a sudden wind at twilight's hush
Had snapped her stem alone of all the bush.
And God, Who hears both sun-dried dust and sun,
Had pity, whispering to that luckless one,
"Sister, in that thou sayest We did not well --
What voices heardst thou when thy petals fell?"
And the Rose answered, "In that evil hour
A voice said, `Father, wherefore falls the flower?
For lo, the very gossamers are still.'
And a voice answered, `Son, by Allah's will!'"
Then softly as a rain-mist on the sward,
Came to the Rose the Answer of the Lord:
"Sister, before We smote the dark in twain,
Ere yet the stars saw one another plain,
Time, Tide, and Space, We bound unto the task
That thou shouldst fall, and such an one should ask."
Whereat the withered flower, all content,
Died as they die whose days are innocent;
While he who questioned why the flower fell
Caught hold of God and saved his soul from Hell.
Scheme | AAXXBBCCDDEE FFGGHHXXCC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101010101 1111010111 010101111 1101011101 0111111101 11010011101 1001111111 1101111101 00110011010 011111010 11010111 001101111 1101011101 1101010101 1001110101 1101110101 1101111001 1111011111 101010110 1111111100 1111010101 1111011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 970 |
Words | 188 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 10 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 377 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 91 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 20, 2023
- 55 sec read
- 206 Views
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"The Answer" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33354/the-answer>.
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