Analysis of The Children of the Night
For those that never know the light,
The darkness is a sullen thing;
And they, the Children of the Night,
Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing.
But some are strong and some are weak, --
And there's the story. House and home
Are shut from countless hearts that seek
World-refuge that will never come.
And if there be no other life,
And if there be no other chance
To weigh their sorrow and their strife
Than in the scales of circumstance,
'T were better, ere the sun go down
Upon the first day we embark,
In life's imbittered sea to drown,
Than sail forever in the dark.
But if there be a soul on earth
So blinded with its own misuse
Of man's revealed, incessant worth,
Or worn with anguish, that it views
No light but for a mortal eye,
No rest but of a mortal sleep,
No God but in a prophet's lie,
No faith for "honest doubt" to keep;
If there be nothing, good or bad,
But chaos for a soul to trust, --
God counts it for a soul gone mad,
And if God be God, He is just.
And if God be God, He is Love;
And though the Dawn be still so dim,
It shows us we have played enough
With creeds that make a fiend of Him.
There is one creed, and only one,
That glorifies God's excellence;
So cherish, that His will be done,
The common creed of common sense.
It is the crimson, not the gray,
That charms the twilight of all time;
It is the promise of the day
That makes the starry sky sublime;
It is the faith within the fear
That holds us to the life we curse; --
So let us in ourselves revere
The Self which is the Universe!
Let us, the Children of the Night,
Put off the cloak that hides the scar!
Let us be Children of the Light,
And tell the ages what we are!
Scheme | ABAB CXCX DEDE FGFG HIHI JKJK LMLM XNXN OXOX PQPQ RSRS ATAT |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (83%) |
Metre | 11110101 01010101 01010101 1101010 11110111 01010101 11110111 11011101 01111101 01111101 11110011 1001110 101010111 01011101 011111 11010001 11110111 11011101 11010101 11110111 11110101 11110101 1110011 11110111 11110111 11010111 11110111 01111111 01111111 01011111 11111101 11110111 11110101 1101100 11011111 01011101 11010101 1101111 11010101 11010101 11010101 11110111 111000101 0111010 11010101 11011101 11110101 01010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,654 |
Words | 332 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 104 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 1:41 min read
- 312 Views
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"The Children of the Night" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10035/the-children-of-the-night>.
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