Analysis of Resurrection, imperfect

John Donne 1572 (London) – 1631 (London)



Sleep sleep old Sun, thou canst not have repast  
As yet, the wound thou took’st on friday last;  
Sleep then, and rest; The world may bearer thy stay,  
A better Sun rose before thee to day,  
Who, not content to’englighten all that dwell          
On the earths face, as thou, enlightned hell,  
And made the darker fires languish in that vale,  
As, at thy presence here, our fires grow pale.  
Whose body having walk’d on earth, and now  
Hasting to Heaven, would, that he might allow         
Himself unto all stations, and fill all,  
For these three days become a mineral;  
He was all gold when he lay down, but rose  
All tincture, and doth not alone dispose  
Leaden and iron wills to good, but is         
Of power to make even sinful flesh like his.  
Had one of those, whose credulous piety  
Thought, that a Soul one might discern and see  
Go from a body,’at this sepulcher been,  
And, issuing from the sheet, this body seen,         
He would have justly thought this body a soul,  
If not of any man, yet of the whole.  
 Desunt cætera


Scheme AAAABBCCDDEFGGHHAIJKLLM
Poetic Form
Metre 111111111 1101111101 11010111011 0101101111 11101111 10111111 010101010011 111101101011 1101011101 10110111101 0110110011 1111010100 1111111111 1100110101 1001011111 110111010111 11111100100 1101110101 1101111 01001011101 11110111001 1111011101 111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,048
Words 187
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 23
Lines Amount 23
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 756
Words per stanza (avg) 184
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 11, 2023

56 sec read
126

John Donne

John Donne was an English poet, satirist, lawyer and a cleric in the Church of England. more…

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