Analysis of On The World
Jonathan Swift 1667 (Dublin) – 1745 (Ireland)
WITH a whirl of thoughts oppress’d,
I sunk from reverie to rest.
A horrid vision seized my head,
I saw the graves give up their dead!
Jove, arm’d with terrors, bursts the skies,
And thunder roars and lightning flies!
Amazed, confused, its fate unknown,
The world stands trembling at his throne!
While each pale sinner hung his head,
Jove, nodding, shook the heavens, and said:
“Offending race of human kind,
By nature, reason, learning, blind;
You who, through frailty, stepp’d aside;
And you, who never fell from pride:
You who in different sects were shamm’d,
And come to see each other damn’d;
(So some folk told you, but they knew
No more of Jove’s designs than you
—The world’s mad business now is o’er,
And I resent these pranks no more.
—I to such blockheads set my wit!
I damn such fools!—Go, go, you’re bit.”
Scheme | AAAABBCCAAAAAAAADDEEAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101111 11110011 01010111 11011111 11110101 01010101 01011101 011100111 11110111 110101001 01011101 11010101 11110101 01110111 110100101 01111101 11111111 11110111 01110111 01011111 1111111 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 853 |
Words | 149 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 22 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 621 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 145 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 86 Views
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"On The World" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/24304/on-the-world>.
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