Analysis of A Garden Idyl
George Meredith 1828 (Portsmouth, Hampshire) – 1909 (Box Hill, Surrey)
With sagest craft Arachne worked
Her web, and at a corner lurked,
Awaiting what should plump her soon,
To case it in the death-cocoon.
Sagaciously her home she chose
For visits that would never close;
Inside my chalet-porch her feast
Plucked all the winds but chill North-east.
The finished structure, bar on bar,
Had snatched from light to form a star,
And struck on sight, when quick with dews,
Like music of the very Muse.
Great artists pass our single sense;
We hear in seeing, strung to tense;
Then haply marvel, groan mayhap,
To think such beauty means a trap.
But Nature's genius, even man's
At best, is practical in plans;
Subservient to the needy thought,
However rare the weapon wrought.
As long as Nature holds it good
To urge her creatures' quest for food
Will beauty stamp the just intent
Of weapons upon service bent.
For beauty is a flower of roots
Embedded lower than our boots;
Out of the primal strata springs,
And shows for crown of useful things
Arachne's dream of prey to size
Aspired; so she could nigh despise
The puny specks the breezes round
Supplied, and let them shake unwound;
Assured of her fat fly to come;
Perhaps a blue, the spider's plum;
Who takes the fatal odds in fight,
And gives repast an appetite,
By plunging, whizzing, till his wings
Are webbed, and in the lists he swings,
A shrouded lump, for her to see
Her banquet in her victory.
This matron of the unnumbered threads,
One day of dandelions' heads
Distributing their gray perruques
Up every gust, I watched with looks
Discreet beside the chalet-door;
And gracefully a light wind bore,
Direct upon my webster's wall,
A monster in the form of ball;
The mildest captive ever snared,
That neither struggled nor despaired,
On half the net invading hung,
And plain as in her mother tongue,
While low the weaver cursed her lures,
Remarked, 'You have me; I am yours.'
Thrice magnified, in phantom shape,
Her dream of size she saw, agape.
Midway the vast round-raying beard
A desiccated midge appeared;
Whose body pricked the name of meal,
Whose hair had growth in earth's unreal;
Provocative of dread and wrath,
Contempt and horror, in one froth,
Inextricable, insensible,
His poison presence there would dwell,
Declaring him her dream fulfilled,
A catch to compliment the skilled;
And she reduced to beaky skin,
Disgraceful among kith and kin
Against her corner, humped and aged,
Arachne wrinkled, past enraged,
Beyond disgust or hope in guile.
Ridiculously volatile
He seemed to her last spark of mind;
And that in pallid ash declined
Beneath the blow by knowledge dealt,
Wherein throughout her frame she felt
That he, the light wind's libertine,
Without a scoff, without a grin,
And mannered like the courtly few,
Who merely danced when light winds blew,
Impervious to beak and claws,
Tradition's ruinous Whitebeard was;
Of whom, as actors in old scenes,
Had grannam weavers warned their weans,
With word, that less than feather-weight,
He smote the web like bolt of Fate.
This muted drama, hour by hour,
I watched amid a world in flower,
Ere yet Autumnal threads had laid
Their gray-blue o'er the grass's blade,
And still along the garden-run
The blindworm stretched him, drunk of sun.
Arachne crouched unmoved; perchance
Her visitor performed a dance;
She puckered thinner; he the same
As when on that light wind he came.
Next day was told what deeds of night
Were done; the web had vanished quite;
With it the strange opposing pair;
And listless waved on vacant air,
For her adieu to heart's content,
A solitary filament.
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111 01010101 01011101 11100101 10111 11011101 0111101 11011111 01010111 11111101 01111111 11010101 110110101 11010111 111011 11110101 11010101 11110001 010010101 1010101 11110111 11010111 11010101 11001101 110101011 010101101 11010101 01111101 111111 01111101 01010101 01011101 01101111 0101011 11010101 011110 11010111 11000111 01011011 01000100 1101011 1111001 0100111 110011111 0101011 01000111 01011101 01000111 01010101 11010101 11010101 01100101 11010101 01111111 1100101 01111101 101111 01000101 11010111 11110101 01001101 01010011 010000100 11010111 01010101 01110001 0101111 01001101 01010101 110101 01011101 01000100 11101111 01010101 01011101 01010111 1101110 01010101 01010101 11011111 01001101 110011 11110011 1110111 11111101 11011111 1101010110 110101010 11010111 11110011 01010101 0111111 110101 01000101 1110101 11111111 11111111 01011101 11010101 01011101 10011110 0100100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 3,421 |
Words | 607 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 20, 12, 14, 14, 18, 10, 6 |
Lines Amount | 102 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 348 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 76 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:05 min read
- 86 Views
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"A Garden Idyl" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/15416/a-garden-idyl>.
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