Analysis of The Wandering Jew
I saw by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.
For though the figure and the scene
Were never to be reconciled,
I knew the man as I had known
His image when I was a child.
With evidence at every turn,
I should have held it safe to guess
That all the newness of New York
Had nothing new in loneliness;
Yet here was one who might be Noah,
Or Nathan, or Abimelech,
Or Lamech, out of ages lost,—
Or, more than all, Melchizedek.
Assured that he was none of these,
I gave them back their names again,
To scan once more those endless eyes
Where all my questions ended then.
I found in them what they revealed
That I shall not live to forget,
And wondered if they found in mine
Compassion that I might regret.
Pity, I learned, was not the least
Of time’s offending benefits
That had now for so long impugned
The conservation of his wits:
Rather it was that I should yield,
Alone, the fealty that presents
The tribute of a tempered ear
To an untempered eloquence.
Before I pondered long enough
On whence he came and who he was,
I trembled at his ringing wealth
Of manifold anathemas;
I wondered, while he seared the world,
What new defection ailed the race,
And if it mattered how remote
Our fathers were from such a place.
Before there was an hour for me
To contemplate with less concern
The crumbling realm awaiting us
Than his that was beyond return,
A dawning on the dust of years
Had shaped with an elusive light
Mirages of remembered scenes
That were no longer for the sight.
For now the gloom that hid the man
Became a daylight on his wrath,
And one wherein my fancy viewed
New lions ramping in his path.
The old were dead and had no fangs,
Wherefore he loved them—seeing not
They were the same that in their time
Had eaten everything they caught.
The world around him was a gift
Of anguish to his eyes and ears,
And one that he had long reviled
As fit for devils, not for seers.
Where, then, was there a place for him
That on this other side of death
Saw nothing good, as he had seen
No good come out of Nazareth?
Yet here there was a reticence,
And I believe his only one,
That hushed him as if he beheld
A Presence that would not be gone.
In such a silence he confessed
How much there was to be denied;
And he would look at me and live,
As others might have looked and died.
As if at last he knew again
That he had always known, his eyes
Were like to those of one who gazed
On those of One who never dies.
For such a moment he revealed
What life has in it to be lost;
And I could ask if what I saw,
Before me there, was man or ghost.
He may have died so many times
That all there was of him to see
Was pride, that kept itself alive
As too rebellious to be free;
He may have told, when more than once
Humility seemed imminent,
How many a lonely time in vain
The Second Coming came and went.
Whether he still defies or not
The failure of an angry task
That relegates him out of time
To chaos, I can only ask.
But as I knew him, so he was;
And somewhere among men to-day
Those old, unyielding eyes may flash,
And flinch—and look the other way.
Scheme | ABXBCDXD EXXFXGHB XIAIJKXK XLXLJXXM XNXAXOXO PEFEQRXR XSXSXTUT XQDXXXCX MXDXXVWV IAXAJHXX XPWPMXXX TXUXNYGY |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110011 1101010 01111111 11111100 11010001 0101110 11011111 11011101 110011001 11111111 11010111 11010100 111111110 11011 1111101 11111 01111111 11111101 11111101 11110101 11011101 11111101 01011101 01011101 10111101 11010100 11111101 0010111 10111111 010100110 01010101 111100 01110101 11110111 11011101 1101 11011101 11010101 01110101 101001101 011111011 1101101 010010101 11110101 01010111 11110101 01010101 10110101 11011101 0101111 01011101 11010011 01010111 1111101 10011011 1101011 01011101 11011101 01111101 11110111 11110111 11110111 11011111 11111100 11110100 01011101 1111111 01011111 01010101 11111101 01111101 11011101 11111101 1111111 01111111 11111101 11010101 11101111 01111111 01111111 11111101 11111111 11110101 11010111 11111111 01001100 110010101 01010101 10110111 01011101 111111 11011101 11111111 0101111 11010111 01010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 3,120 |
Words | 616 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 12 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 96 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 203 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 51 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 3:04 min read
- 194 Views
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"The Wandering Jew" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10075/the-wandering-jew>.
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