Analysis of The School
John Crowe Ransom 1888 (Pulaski) – 1974 (Gambier)
I WAS not drowsy though the scholars droned.
Hearing the music that they made of Greek,
Whenever Helen's unforgotten face
Sent other young men whisking off to war;
Hearing much mention of the hecatombs,
And Pericles, and fishes that were purple,
Temples in white, and trees that they named olive;
And thinking always of proud Athens shining
Upon her hill, that slanted to her sea:
Equipped with Grecian thoughts, how could I live
Among my father's folk? My father's house
Was narrow and his fields were nauseous.
I kicked his clods for being common dirt,
Worthy a world which never could be Greek;
Cursed the paternity that planted me
One green leaf in a wilderness of autumn;
And wept, as fitting such a fruitful spirit
Sealed in a yellow tomb.
The Lord preserves his saints for Christian uses.
He sent a pair of providential eyes.
They would have sat in any witless head,
Although I deemed them deep as classic seas,
As strange as any woman written smiling,
And much more near; the merest modern eyes,
The first my Athens faced; and yet her lamp,
It flickered rather low.
Then he commanded me to scrutiny
As to a fingered thing of no great matter,
A circumstantial sorry little coin.
A friendly thing, I owned, to lie so warm
Against the side of any friendless man;
And in the hand--O if the happy hand
Accommodate the cunning rounded scepter,
Then is dominion seated in that palm,
And coveting is seated in men's eyes.
Make haste, my hands, about your own inclosures!
And what were dead Greek empires to me then?
Dishonored, by Apollo, and forgot.
Scheme | XABCBXXDE XXXXAEXXX XFXXDFXX EXXXXXCXFBXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111010101 1001011111 0101011 110111111 10110101 010101010 10010111110 0101111010 0101110101 0111011111 0111011101 110011010 1111110101 1001110111 1001001101 11100100110 01110101010 100101 01011111010 110110101 1111010101 111111101 11110101010 0111010101 0111010101 110101 1101011100 11010111110 001010101 0101111111 010111011 0001110101 010010101 1101010011 01110011 111101111 01011100111 0101010001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,524 |
Words | 276 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 9, 8, 12 |
Lines Amount | 38 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 307 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 69 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:24 min read
- 62 Views
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"The School" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22419/the-school>.
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