Analysis of I'm Still Just a Child

Franz Werfel 1890 (Prague) – 1945 (Manhattan)



O Lord, tear me to pieces.
I'm still just a child.
And dare to sing
And call upon you
And tell you about things:
We are.

I open my mouth
Before you unleash your agonies upon me.
I have my health
And have no idea how old men rust away,
I've never braced myself against the posts
The way women do for hours.

I never push myself through the tired night
Like truly august droshky nags
That long escaped their background,
(Amid that enchanting, dashing sound
Of lady's footsteps and all, something laughs) .
I never pushed myself like hacks trotting on ad infinitum.

I was never the sailor when the oil's extinguished,
When the water rushing in sneers at the sun,
When the distress shot thunders,
When the rocket convulses upward.
I never dropped myself, to make it up to you,
On my knees, Lord, with a last world prayer.

I was never a child crushed in the fabric
Of this miserable time, a little arm all bandaged.
I have never starved inside the asylum,
Don't know how mothers stitch the eyes,
All of you, those who die, I don't know how you die!

But You, Lord, came down for me too.
And you found the thousandfold torments,
You delivered in every woman,
You died in the shit, in every piece of paper,
You were mistreated in every circus seal,
And you were some cavalier to a whore.

Lord, tear me to pieces.
Why this dull, miserable delicacy?
I'm not worth what flowed from your wounds.
Bless me with mortifications, prick after prick.
I want the death of the whole world included.
Lord, tear me to pieces.

Until I'm dead in every shred first,
Worked to death in every dog, every horse,
And dying of thirst, a soldier in the desert,
Until, poor sinner I, painfully tasted the sacrament on my
tongue,
Till I'm this eaten body stretched out on a bitter bed,
Taking the form that I mocked, courted.

And only when I'm scattered to the wind,
Plunge from each death, from each life,
Then, Lord, torch me in the thorns.
I'm your child.
Then, Word, sizzle skyward, that I can tell I need,
Burn inconsumable through the universe: We are! !


Scheme abxcxd xexxxf xxggxh xifxcx jxhxk cxixxx AexjxA xxxkxxx xxxbxd
Poetic Form
Metre 1111110 11101 0111 01011 011011 11 11011 011011100011 1111 011010111101 110110101 01101110 1101110101 1101011 110111 011010101 110101101 110111110110100 1110010101010 10101001101 1001110 1010110 11011111111 111110111 11100110010 11100010101110 11101010010 11110101 111111111111 11111111 011011 1010010010 1100101001110 100100100101 010101101 111110 11110001000 11111111 11111101 11011011010 111110 0111010011 111010011001 010110100010 01110110010010011 1 11110101110101 100111110 0101110101 1111111 1111001 111 111010111111 11101011
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 2,036
Words 374
Sentences 25
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 6, 7, 6
Lines Amount 54
Letters per line (avg) 29
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 174
Words per stanza (avg) 42
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

1:55 min read
139

Franz Werfel

Franz Viktor Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet whose career spanned World War I, the Interwar period, and World War II. more…

All Franz Werfel poems | Franz Werfel Books

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