Analysis of Robert the Bruce (To Douglas in Dying)
Edwin Muir 1887 (Orkney) – 1959 (Cambridge)
'MY life is done, yet all remains,
The breath has gone, the image not,
The furious shapes once forged in heat
Live on though now no longer hot.
'Steadily the shining swords
In order rise, in order fall,
In order on the beaten field
The faithful trumpets call.
'The women weeping for the dead
Are not sad now but dutiful,
The dead men stiffening in their place
Proclaim the ancient rule.
'Great Wallace's body hewn in four,
So altered, stays as it must be.
0 Douglas do not leave me now,
For past your head I see
'My dagger sheathed in Comyn's heart
And nothing there to praise or blame,
Nothing but order which must be
Itself and still the same.
'But that Christ hung upon the Cross,
Comyn would rot until time's end
And bury my sin in boundless dust,
For there is no amend.
'In order; yet in order run
All things by unreturning ways,
If Christ live not, nothing is there
For sorrow or for praise.'
So the king spoke to Douglas once
A little while before his death,
Having outfaced three English kings
And kept a people's faith.
Scheme | ABCBDEFEGHIJKLMLNOLOPQRQSTUTVWXY |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111101 01110101 010011101 11111101 1000101 01010101 01010101 010101 01010101 11111100 011100011 010101 110010101 11011111 1011111 111111 1101011 01011111 10110111 010101 11110101 1110111 010110101 111101 01010101 11111 11111011 110111 10111101 01010111 1011101 010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,005 |
Words | 195 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 32 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 800 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 192 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 59 sec read
- 127 Views
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