Analysis of Arisen At Last

John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)



I SAID I stood upon thy grave,
My Mother State, when last the moon
Of blossoms clomb the skies of June.
And, scattering ashes on my head,
I wore, undreaming of relief,
The sackcloth of thy shame and grief.
Again that moon of blossoms shines
On leaf and flower and folded wing,
And thou hast risen with the spring!
Once more thy strong maternal arms
Are round about thy children flung, —
A lioness that guards her young!
No threat is on thy closëd lips,
But in thine eye a power to smite
The mad wolf backward from its light.
Southward the baffled robber's track
Henceforth runs only; hereaway,
The fell lycanthrope finds no prey.
Henceforth, within thy sacred gates,
His first low howl shall downward draw
The thunder of thy righteous law.
Not mindless of thy trade and gain,
But, acting on the wiser plan,
Thou 'rt grown conservative of man.
So shalt thou clothe with life the hope,
Dream-painted on the sightless eyes
Of him who sang of Paradise, —
The vision of a Christian man,
In virtue, as in stature great
Embodied in a Christian State.
And thou, amidst thy sisterhood
Forbearing long, yet standing fast,
Shalt win their grateful thanks at last;
When North and South shall strive no more,
And all their feuds and fears be lost
In Freedom's holy Pentecost.


Scheme ABBCDDEFFGHHICJKLMNOOPQQRSTQUUVWWXYY
Poetic Form
Metre 11110111 11011101 11010111 010010111 111101 0111101 01111101 110100101 01110101 11110101 11011101 011101 11111111 101101011 01110111 1001011 111101 011111 11011101 11111101 01011101 11011101 11010101 111010011 11111101 1101011 1111110 01010101 01010101 01000101 01011100 111101 11110111 11011111 01110111 0101010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,240
Words 228
Sentences 11
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 36
Lines Amount 36
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 995
Words per stanza (avg) 226
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:09 min read
40

John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier was an influential American Quaker poet and ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery in the United States. more…

All John Greenleaf Whittier poems | John Greenleaf Whittier Books

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