Analysis of Geometry
My window looks upon a wood
That stands as tangled as it stood
When God was centuries too young
To care how right he worked, or wrong,
His patterns in obedient trees,
Unprofited by the centuries
He still plants on as crazily
As in his drivelling infancy.
Poor little elms beneath the oak!
They thrash their arms around and poke
At tyrant throats, and try to stand
Straight up, like owners of the land;
For they expect the vainest things,
And even the boniest have their flings.
Hickory shoots unnumbered rise,
Sallow and wasting themselves in sighs,
Children begot at a criminal rate
In the sight of a God that is profligate.
The oak-trees tower over all,
They seem to rise above the brawl,
They seem--but just observe the hoax,
They are obscured by other oaks!
They laugh the weaklings out of mind,
And fight forever with their kind.
For oaks are spindling too, and bent,
And only strong by accident;
And if there is a single tree
Of half the size it ought to be,
It need not give him thanks for that,
He did not plan its habitat.
When tree-tops go to pushing so,
There's every evil thing below;
There's clammy fungus everywhere,
And poison waving on the air,
A plague of insects from the pool
To sting some ever-trusting fool,
Serpents issuing from the foot
Of oak-trees rotten at the root,
Owls and frogs and whippoorwills,
Cackling of all sorts of ills.
Imagine what a pretty thing
The slightest landscape-gardening
Had made of God's neglected wood!
I'm glad man has the hardihood
To tamper with creation's plan
And shape it worthier of man.
Imagine woods and sun-swept spaces,
Shadows and lights in proper places,
Trees just touching friendly-wise,
Bees and flowers and butterflies.
An easy thing to improve on God,
Simply the knowing of even from odd,
Simply to count and then dispose
In patterns everybody knows,
Simply to follow curve and line
In geometrical design.
Gardeners only cut their trees
For nobler regularities.
But from my window I have seen
The noblest patch of quivering green
Lashed till it never quivered again.
God had a fit of temper then,
And spat shrill wind and lightning out
At twinges of some godly gout.
But as for me, I keep indoors
Whenever he starts his awful roars.
What can one hope of a crazy God
But lashings from an aimless rod?
Scheme | AAXXBBCC DDEEFF GGHH IIJJKK XXCCLL MMNNOOXXPP QQAARRSSGG TTUUVV BBWWXXYY ZZTT |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010101 11110111 11110011 11111111 110001001 110100 11111100 1011100 11010101 11110101 11010111 11110101 1101011 01001111 100111 10100101 1001101001 0011011110 01110101 11110101 11110101 11011101 1101111 01010111 1111101 01011100 01110101 11011111 11111111 1111110 11111101 110010101 1101010 01010101 0111101 11110101 10100101 11110101 101010 10011111 01010101 0101100 11110101 111101 110111 01110011 010101110 10101010 1110101 1010010 110110111 1001011011 10110101 0101001 10110101 0010001 10010111 1101 11110111 010111001 11110101 11011101 01110101 1111101 1111111 010111101 111110101 11011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,218 |
Words | 405 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6, 4, 6, 6, 10, 10, 6, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 68 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 180 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 16, 2023
- 2:03 min read
- 75 Views
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"Geometry" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22387/geometry>.
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