Analysis of Good Friday

George Herbert 1593 (Montgomery) – 1633 (Bemerton)



O my chief good,
How shall I measure out thy blood?
How shall I count what thee befell,
And each grief tell?

Shall I thy woes
Number according to thy foes?
Or, since one star show'd thy first breath,
Shall all thy death?

Or shall each leaf,
Which falls in Autumn, score a grief?
Or cannot leaves, but fruit be sign
Of the true vine?

Then let each hour
Of my whole life one grief devour:
That thy distress through all may run,
And be my sun.

Or rather let
My several sins their sorrows get;
That as each beast his cure doth know,
Each sin may so.

Since blood is fittest, Lord to write
Thy sorrows in, and bloody fight;
My heart hath store, write there, where in
One box doth lie both ink and sin:

That when sin spies so many foes,
Thy whips, thy nails, thy wounds, thy woes
All come to lodge there, sin may say,
'No room for me', and fly away.

Sin being gone, oh fill the place,
And keep possession with thy grace;
Lest sin take courage and return,
And all the writings blot or burn.


Scheme XXAA BBCC DDEE FFGG HHII JJKK BBLL MMNN
Poetic Form Quatrain  (88%)
Metre 1111 11110111 11111101 0111 1111 10010111 11111111 1111 1111 11010101 11011111 1011 11110 111111010 11011111 0111 1101 11011101 11111111 1111 11110111 11000101 11111110 11111101 11111101 11111111 11111111 11110101 11011101 01010111 11110001 01010111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 982
Words 195
Sentences 11
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 23
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 94
Words per stanza (avg) 24
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 13, 2023

58 sec read
183

George Herbert

The Very Reverend Honourable George Herbert was an Anglican priest. more…

All George Herbert poems | George Herbert Books

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