Analysis of A Recusant

James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)



THE CHURCH stands there beyond the orchard-blooms:
How yearningly I gaze upon its spire!
Lifted mysterious through the twilight glooms,
Dissolving in the sunset’s golden fire,
Or dim as slender incense morn by morn
Ascending to the blue and open sky.
For ever when my heart feels most forlorn
It murmurs to me with a weary sigh,
How sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray
With all the others whom we love so well!
All disbelief and, doubt might pass away,
All peace float to us with its Sabbath bell.
Conscience replies, There is but one good rest,
Whose head is pillowed upon Truth’s pure breast.


Scheme ABACDEDEFGFGHH
Poetic Form
Metre 0111010101 11110111 1001001011 0100011010 1111001111 0101010101 1101111101 1101110101 1111001101 1101011111 101011101 1111111101 1001111111 111101111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 594
Words 109
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 472
Words per stanza (avg) 107
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

32 sec read
50

James Thomson

James Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian-era poet famous primarily for the long poem The City of Dreadful Night, an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment. more…

All James Thomson poems | James Thomson Books

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