Analysis of Earth's Preference

George Meredith 1828 (Portsmouth, Hampshire) – 1909 (Box Hill, Surrey)



Earth loves her young: a preference manifest:
She prompts them to her fruits and flower-beds;
Their beauty with her choicest interthreads,
And makes her revel of their merry zest;
As in our East much were it in our West,
If men had risen to do the work of heads.
Her gabbling grey she eyes askant, nor treads
The ways they walk; by what they speak oppressed.
How wrought they in their zenith? 'Tis not writ;
Not all; yet she by one sure sign can read:
Have they but held her laws and nature dear,
They mouth no sentence of inverted wit.
More prizes she her beasts than this high breed
Wry in the shape she wastes her milk to rear.


Scheme ABBAABBACDECFE
Poetic Form
Metre 1101010010 1111010101 11010101 0101011101 101011010101 11110110111 01111111 0111111101 1110110111 1111111111 1111010101 1111010101 1101011111 1001110111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 625
Words 122
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 492
Words per stanza (avg) 120
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

36 sec read
106

George Meredith

George Meredith was an English novelist and poet of the Victorian era. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature seven times. more…

All George Meredith poems | George Meredith Books

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