Analysis of The Holy War
For here lay the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul, that the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto. --Bunyan's Holy War.
A tinker out of Bedford,
A vagrant oft in quod,
A privet under Fairfax,
A minister of God--
Two hundred years and thirty
Ere Armageddon came
His single hand portrayed it,
And Bunyan was his name!
He mapped for those who follow,
The world in which we are--
"This famous town of Mansoul"
That takes the Holy War.
Her true and traitor people,
The gates along her wall,
From Eye Gate unto Feel Gate,
John Bunyan showed them all.
All enemy divisions,
Recruits of every class,
And highly-screened positions
For flame or poison-gas;
The craft that we call modern,
The crimes that we call new,
John Bunyan had 'em typed and filed
In sixteen Eighty-two.
Likewise the Lords of Looseness
That hamper faith and works,
The Perseverance-Doubters,
And Present-Comfort shirks,
With brittle intellectuals
Who crack beneath a strain--
John Bunyan met that helpful set
In Charles the Second's reign.
Emmanuel's vanguard dying
For right and not for rights,
My Lord Apollyon lying
To the State-kept Stockholmites,
The Pope, the swithering Neutrals
The Kaiser and his Gott--
Their roles, their goals, their naked souls--
He knew and drew the lot.
Now he hath left his quarters,
In Bunhill Fields to lie,
The wisdom that he taught us
Is proven prophecy--
One watchword through our Armies,
One answer from our Lands:--
"No dealings with Diabolus
As long as Mansoul stands!"
A pedlar from a hovel,
The lowest of the low,
The Father of the Novel,
Salvation's first Defoe,
Eight blinded generations
Ere Armageddon came,
He showed us how to meet it,
And Bunyan was his name!
Scheme | a bbcx dEfE gxgahixi jkjkxlxl cxmcnoxo pxpcnqxq mxxdxrcr hghgjEfE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101001011111101110110111101100110010110111101 0101110 010101 01101 010011 1101010 10101 1101011 010111 1111110 010111 110111 110101 0101010 010101 1111011 110111 1100010 0111001 0101010 111101 0111110 011111 11011101 001101 10111 110101 001010 010101 1100100 110101 11011101 010101 1110 110111 11110 10111 010110 010011 11111101 110101 1111110 01111 0101111 110100 1111010 1101101 11011 11111 011010 010101 0101010 1101 110010 10101 1111111 010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,710 |
Words | 304 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 4, 4, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 57 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 154 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 1:32 min read
- 284 Views
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"The Holy War" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33447/the-holy-war>.
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