Analysis of To the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund
James Clerk Maxwell 1831 (Edinburgh, Scotland) – 1879 (Cambridge, England)
O wretched race of men, to space confined!
What honour can ye pay to him, whose mind
To that which lies beyond hath penetrated?
The symbols he bath formed shall sound his praise,
And lead him on through unimagined ways
To conquests new, in worlds not yet created.
First, ye Determinants! in ordered row
And massive column ranged, before him go,
To form a phalanx for his safe protection.
Ye powers of the nth roots of — 1!
Around his head in ceaseless cycles run,
As unembodied spirits of direction.
And you, ye undevelopable scrolls!
Above the host wave your emblazoned rolls,
Ruled for the record of his bright inventions.
Ye Cubic surfaces! by threes and nines
Draw round his camp your seven-and-twenty lines—
The seal of Solomon in three dimensions.
March on, symbolic host! with step sublime,
Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time!
There pause, until by Dickenson depicted,
In two dimensions, we the form may trace
Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space,
In n dimensions flourished unrestricted.
Scheme | AABCCB DDEXEE FFGHHG IIBJJX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101111101 111111111 1111011100 0101111111 011110101 1110111010 1101000101 0101010111 11010111010 11010111 0111010101 11101010 01111 0101110101 11001111010 1101001101 11111100101 01110001010 1101011101 1101011101 11011100010 0101010111 1111111101 0101010010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,001 |
Words | 177 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 201 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 44 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 53 sec read
- 99 Views
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"To the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/20084/to-the-committee-of-the-cayley-portrait-fund>.
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