Analysis of A Nation's Test



I.
A NATION'S greatness lies in men, not acres;
One master-mind is worth a million hands.
No royal robes have marked the planet-shakers,
But Samson-strength to burst the ages' bands.
The might of empire gives no crown supernal—
Athens is here—but where is Macedon?
A dozen lives make Greece and Rome eternal,
And England's fame might safely rest on one.

Here test and text are drawn from Nature's preaching:
Afric and Asia—half the rounded earth—
In teeming lives the solemn truth are teaching,
That insect-millions may have human birth.
Sun-kissed and fruitful, every clod is breeding
A petty life, too small to reach the eye:
So must it be, with no man thinking, leading,
The generations creep their course and die.

Hapless the lands, and doomed amid the races,
That give no answer to this royal test;
Their toiling tribes will droop ignoble faces,
Till earth in pity takes them back to rest.
A vast monotony may not be evil,
But God's light tells us it cannot be good;
Valley and hill have beauty—but the level
Must bear a shadeless and a stagnant brood.

II.
I bring the touchstone. Motherland, to thee,
And test thee trembling, fearing thou shouldst fail;
If fruitless, sonless, thou wert proved to be,
Ah, what would love and memory avail?

Brave land! God has blest thee!
Thy strong heart I feel,
As I touch thee and test thee—
Dear land! As the steel
To the magnet flies upward, so rises thy breast,
With a motherly pride to the touch of the test.

III.
See! she smiles beneath the touchstone, looking on her distant youth,
Looking down her line of leaders and of workers for the truth.
Ere the Teuton, Norseman, Briton, left the primal woodland spring,
When their rule was might and rapine, and their law a painted king;
When the sun of art and learning still was in the Orient;
When the pride of Babylonia under Cyrus' hand was shent;
When the sphinx's introverted eye turned fresh from Egypt's guilt;
When the Persian bowed to Athens; when the Parthenon was built;
When the Macedonian climax closed the Commonwealths of Greece;
When the wrath of Roman manhood burst on Tarquin for Lucrece—
Then was Erin rich in knowledge—thence from out her Ollamh's store—
Kenned to-day by students only—grew her ancient Senchus More;
Then were reared her mighty builders, who made temples to the sun—
There they stand—the old Round Towers—showing how their work was done:
Thrice a thousand years upon them—shaming all our later art—
Warning fingers raised to tell us we must build with rev’'rent heart.
Ah, we call thee Mother Erin! Mother thou in right of years;
Mother in the large fruition—mother in the joys and tears.
All thy life has been a symbol — we can only read a part:
God will flood thee ,yet with sunshine for the woes that drench thy heart.
All thy life has been symbolic of a human mother's life:
Youth's sweet hopes and dreams have vanished, and the travail and the strife
Are upon thee in the present; but thy work until to-day
Still has been for truth and manhood—and it shall not pass away:
Justice lives, though judgment lingers—angels' feet are heavy shod—
But a planet's years are moments in th' eternal day of God!

IV.
Out from the valley of death and tears,
From the war and want of a thousand years,
From the mark of sword and the rust of chain,
From the smoke and blood of the penal laws,
The Irishmen and the Irish cause
Come out in the front of the field again!

What says the stranger to such a vitality?
What says the statesman to this nationality?
Flung on the shore of a sea of defeat,
Hardly the swimmers have sprung to their feet,
When the nations are thrilled by a clarion-word,
And Burke, the philosopher-statesman, is heard.
When shall his equal be? Down from the stellar height
Sees he the planet and all on its girth—
India, Columbia, and Europe—his eagle-sight
Sweeps at a glance all the wrong upon earth.
Races or sects were to him a profanity:
Hindoo and Negro and Kelt were as one;
Large as mankind was his splendid humanity,
Large in its record the work he has done.

V.
What need to mention men of minor note,
When there be minds that all the heights attain?
What school-boy knoweth not the hand that wrote
'Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain'
What man that speaketh English e'er can lift
His voice 'mid scholars, who hath missed the lore
Of Berkeley, Curran, Sheridan, and Swift,
The art of Foley and the songs of Moore?
Grattan and Flood and Emmet—where i


Scheme ABCBCDEDE FGFGFAFA HIHIDXDX AJDJD JDJDII AKKFFXILLXBMMEENNOPNNQQRRSS QPOEXXE JJTTUUVGVGJEJE JWEWEXMXXA
Poetic Form
Metre 1 01010101110 1101110101 11011101010 1101110101 0111001111 10111111 01011101010 0101110111 11011111010 101010101 01010101110 111011101 110101001110 0101111101 11111111010 001011101 10010101010 1111011101 11011101010 1101011111 01010011110 1111111011 10011101010 110100101 1 11011011 01110010111 110111111 1111010001 111111 11111 1111011 11101 101011011011 101001101101 1 11101011010101 101011100110101 101110101011 11111010110101 10111010110010 101111010111 1011001111101 10101110101011 10010110111 101110111111 11101010111011 11111010101011 101010101110101 111011101011111 1010101110110101 101011111111111 111110101010111 100010101000101 111110101110101 11111111011111 111110101010101 111011100001001 101100101110111 11111010111101 101110101011101 10101110011010111 1 110101101 1010110101 1011100111 1010110101 0100101 1100110101 110101100100 11010110100 1101101101 1001011111 101011101001 01001001011 111101110101 1101001111 10001000101101 1101101011 101101100100 101001011 111111100100 1010101111 1 1111011101 1111110101 111110111 110110101 1111101011 1111011101 1101010001 0111000111 100101011
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 4,418
Words 784
Sentences 36
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 9, 8, 8, 5, 6, 27, 7, 14, 10
Lines Amount 94
Letters per line (avg) 37
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 384
Words per stanza (avg) 87
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 25, 2023

3:59 min read
148

John Boyle O'Reilly

John Boyle O'Reilly was an Irish-born poet, journalist and fiction writer. more…

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