Analysis of Just To Be Good
James Whitcomb Riley 1849 (Greenfield) – 1916 (Indianapolis)
Just to be good--
This is enough--enough!
O we who find sin's billows wild and rough,
Do we not feel how more than any gold
Would be the blameless life we led of old
While yet our lips knew but a mother's kiss?
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!
It is enough--
Enough--just to be good!
To lift our hearts where they are understood;
To let the thirst for worldly power and place
Go unappeased; to smile back in God's face
With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss.
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!
| Scheme | abbccdDDB baaeedDDB |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 1111 110101 1111110101 1111111101 1101011111 11101110101 1111 1111 111101 1101 011111 1110111101 11011101001 11111011 10111010111 1111 1111 111101 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 541 |
| Words | 112 |
| Sentences | 9 |
| Stanzas | 2 |
| Stanza Lengths | 9, 9 |
| Lines Amount | 18 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
| Words per line (avg) | 6 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 209 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 87 Views
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"Just To Be Good" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 8 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20942/just-to-be-good>.
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