Analysis of The Three Taverns
When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.—(Acts xxviii, 15)
Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,
And Andronicus? Is it you I see—
At last? And is it you now that are gazing
As if in doubt of me? Was I not saying
That I should come to Rome? I did say that;
And I said furthermore that I should go
On westward, where the gateway of the world
Lets in the central sea. I did say that,
But I say only, now, that I am Paul—
A prisoner of the Law, and of the Lord
A voice made free. If there be time enough
To live, I may have more to tell you then
Of western matters. I go now to Rome,
Where Cæsar waits for me, and I shall wait,
And Cæsar knows how long. In Cæsarea
There was a legend of Agrippa saying
In a light way to Festus, having heard
My deposition, that I might be free,
Had I stayed free of Cæsar; but the word
Of God would have it as you see it is—
And here I am. The cup that I shall drink
Is mine to drink—the moment or the place
Not mine to say. If it be now in Rome,
Be it now in Rome; and if your faith exceed
The shadow cast of hope, say not of me
Too surely or too soon that years and shipwreck,
And all the many deserts I have crossed
That are not named or regioned, have undone
Beyond the brevities of our mortal healing
The part of me that is the least of me.
You see an older man than he who fell
Prone to the earth when he was nigh Damascus,
Where the great light came down; yet I am he
That fell, and he that saw, and he that heard.
And I am here, at last; and if at last
I give myself to make another crumb
For this pernicious feast of time and men—
Well, I have seen too much of time and men
To fear the ravening or the wrath of either.
Yes, it is Paul you see—the Saul of Tarsus
That was a fiery Jew, and had men slain
For saying Something was beyond the Law,
And in ourselves. I fed my suffering soul
Upon the Law till I went famishing,
Not knowing that I starved. How should I know,
More then than any, that the food I had—
What else it may have been—was not for me?
My fathers and their fathers and their fathers
Had found it good, and said there was no other,
And I was of the line. When Stephen fell,
Among the stones that crushed his life away,
There was no place alive that I could see
For such a man. Why should a man be given
To live beyond the Law? So I said then,
As men say now to me. How then do I
Persist in living? Is that what you ask?
If so, let my appearance be for you
No living answer; for Time writes of death
On men before they die, and what you see
Is not the man. The man that you see not—
The man within the man—is most alive;
Though hatred would have ended, long ago,
The bane of his activities. I have lived,
Because the faith within me that is life
Endures to live, and shall, till soon or late,
Death, like a friend unseen, shall say to me
My toil is over and my work begun.
How often, and how many a time again,
Have I said I should be with you in Rome!
He who is always coming never comes,
Or comes too late, you may have told yourselves;
And I may tell you now that after me,
Whether I stay for little or for long,
The wolves are coming. Have an eye for them,
And a more careful ear for their confusion
Than you need have much longer for the sound
Of what I tell you—should I live to say
More than I say to Cæsar. What I know
Is down for you to read in what is written;
And if I cloud a little with my own
Mortality the gleam that is immortal,
I do it only because I am I—
Being on earth and of it, in so far
As time flays yet the remnant. This you know;
And if I sting men, as I do sometimes,
With a sharp word that hurts, it is because
Man’s habit is to feel before he sees;
And I am of a race that feels. Moreover,
The world is here for what is not yet here
For more than are a few; and even in Rome,
Where men are so enamored of the Cross
That fame has echoed, and increasingly,
The music of your love and of your faith
To foreign ears that are as far away
As Antioch and Haran, yet I wonder
How much of love you know, and if your faith
Be the shut fruit of words. If so, remember
Words are but shells unfilled. Jews have at least
A Law to make them sorry they were born
If they go long without it; and these Gentiles,
For the first time in shrieking history,
Have love and law together, if so they will,
For their defense and their immunity
In these last days. Rome, if I
Scheme | A BBCCDEXDXXAFGHICJIJBXBGXKXXLCKMBKJXXFFI BXXXCEXKBIMNBLFOXXXBXAEXAHKL FGBBKXXLXBELXXOIEBBBIIGBKPNIPIXXBIXKO |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1010111111111111100011011 111 0111111 11011111110 11011111110 1111111111 011101111 110101101 1001011111 1111011111 01001010101 0111111101 1111111111 1101011111 1111110111 011111011 11010101010 0011110101 101011111 1111111101 1111111111 0111011111 1111010101 1111111101 11101011101 011111111 11011111010 0101010111 111111101 01011101010 0111110111 1111011111 11011111010 1011111111 1101110111 0111110111 111110101 1101011101 1111111101 1101101110 11111101110 11010010111 1101010101 000011111001 01011111 1101111111 1111010111 1111111111 11001100110 11110111110 0111011101 0101111101 1111011111 11011101110 1101011111 1111111111 0101011111 1111010111 1101011111 1101110111 1101011111 0101011101 1101110101 01110100111 0101011111 0111011111 1101011111 1111001101 11001100101 1111111101 111110101 1111111101 0111111101 1011110111 0111011111 00110111010 1111110101 1111111111 1111111111 11111101110 0111010111 01000111010 1111001111 1011011011 1111010111 0111111101 1011111101 1101110111 01110111010 0111111111 11110101001 1111010101 1111000100 0101110111 1101111101 1100101110 1111110111 10111111010 1111011111 0111110101 1111011011 1011010100 11010101111 1101010100 0111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,385 |
Words | 914 |
Sentences | 35 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 39, 28, 37 |
Lines Amount | 105 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 831 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 228 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 29, 2023
- 4:34 min read
- 100 Views
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"The Three Taverns" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10068/the-three-taverns>.
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