Analysis of To-day
John Boyle O'Reilly 1844 (Dowth) – 1890 (Boston)
Only from day to day
The life of a wise man runs:
What matter if seasons far away
Have gloom or have double suns?
To climb the unreal path,
We stray from the roadway here;
We swim the rivers of wrath,
And tunnel the hills of fear.
Our feet on the torrent's brink,
Our eyes on the cloud afar,
We fear the things we think,
Instead of the things that are.
Like a tide our work should rise—
Each later wave the best;
To-day is a king in disguise,
To-day is the special test.
Like a sawyer's work is life:
The present makes the flaw,
And the only field for strife
Is the inch before the saw.
Scheme | ABAB CXCX DEDE FGFG HIHI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (80%) Etheree (25%) |
Metre | 101111 0110111 110110101 1111101 110011 111011 1101011 0100111 1011011 10110101 110111 0110111 10110111 110101 11101001 1110101 1010111 010101 0010111 1010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 584 |
Words | 119 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 90 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 15, 2023
- 36 sec read
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"To-day" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 25 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22095/to-day>.
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