Analysis of Anniversary Poem
John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)
ONCE, more, dear friends, you meet beneath
A clouded sky:
Not yet the sword has found its sheath,
And on the sweet spring airs the breath
Of war floats by.
Yet trouble springs not from the ground,
Nor pain from chance;
The Eternal order circles round,
And wave and storm find mete and bound
In Providence.
Full long our feet the flowery ways
Of peace have trod,
Content with creed and garb and phrase:
A harder path in earlier days
Led up to God.
Too cheaply truths, once purchased dear,
Are made our own;
Too long the world has smiled to hear
Our boast of full corn in the ear
By others sown;
To see us stir the martyr fires
Of long ago,
And wrap our satisfied desires
In the singed mantles that our sires
Have dropped below.
But now the cross our worthies bore
On us is laid;
Profession's quiet sleep is o'er,
And in the scale of truth once more
Our faith is weighed.
The cry of innocent blood at last
Is calling down
An answer in the whirlwind-blast,
The thunder and the shadow cast
From Heaven's dark frown.
The land is red with judgments. Who
Stands guiltless forth?
Have we been faithful as we knew,
To God and to our brother true,
To Heaven and Earth?
How faint, through din of merchandise
And count of gain,
Have seemed to us the captive's cries!
How far away the tears and sighs
Of souls in pain!
This day the fearful reckoning comes
To each and all;
We hear amidst our peaceful homes
The summons of the conscript drums,
The bugle's call.
Our path is plain; the war-net draws
Round us in vain,
While, faithful to the Higher Cause,
We keep our fealty to the laws
Through patient pain.
The levelled gun, the battle-brand,
We may not take:
But, calmly loyal, we can stand
And suffer with our suffering land
For conscience' sake.
Why ask for ease where all is pain?
Shall we alone
Be left to add our gain to gain,
When over Armageddon's plain
The trump is blown?
To suffer well is well to serve;
Safe in our Lord
The rigid lines of law shall curve
To spare us; from our heads shall swerve
Its smiting sword.
And light is mingled with the gloom,
And joy with grief;
Divinest compensations come,
Through thorns of judgment mercies bloom
In sweet relief.
Thanks for our privilege to bless,
By word and deed,
The widow in her keen distress,
The childless and the fatherless,
The hearts that bleed!
For fields of duty, opening wide,
Where all our powers
Are tasked the eager steps to guide
Of millions on a path untried:
The slave is ours!
Ours by traditions dear and old,
Which make the race
Our wards to cherish and uphold,
And cast their freedom in the mould
Of Christian grace.
And we may tread the sick-bed floors
Where strong men pine,
And, down the groaning corridors,
Pour freely from our liberal stores
The oil and wine.
Who murmurs that in these dark days
His lot is cast?
God's hand within the shadow lays
The stones whereon His gates of praise
Shall rise at last.
Turn and o'erturn, O outstretched Hand!
Nor stint, nor stay;
The years have never dropped their sand
On mortal issue vast and grand
As ours to-day.
Already, on the sable ground
Of man's despair
Is Freedom's glorious picture found,
With all its dusky hands unbound
Upraised in prayer.
Oh, small shall seem all sacrifice
And pain and loss,
When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
For suffering give the victor's prize,
The crown for cross!
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111101 0101 11011111 01011101 1111 11011101 1111 001010101 01011101 0100 1110101001 1111 10110101 010101001 1111 11011101 11101 11011111 101111001 1101 111101010 1101 011010010 001101101 1101 110110101 1111 010101110 00011111 10111 011100111 1101 1100011 0100011 11011 01111101 1101 11110111 110110101 11001 1111110 0111 1111011 11010101 1101 110101001 1101 110110101 0101011 011 101110111 1101 11010101 1110100101 1101 01010101 1111 11010111 0101101001 1101 11111111 1101 111110111 11011 0111 11011111 10101 01011111 111110111 111 01110101 0111 10101 11110101 0101 11101011 1101 01000101 01000100 0111 111101001 111010 11010111 11010101 01110 101010101 1101 101110001 01110001 1101 01110111 1111 01010100 1101101001 0101 11010111 1111 1101011 0111111 1111 1011011 1111 01110111 11010101 11011 01010101 1101 110100101 1111101 101 1111110 0101 11110101 110010101 0111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 3,205 |
Words | 611 |
Sentences | 29 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 115 |
Lines Amount | 115 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 2,598 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 609 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 3:06 min read
- 114 Views
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