Analysis of The Old College
Padraic Colum 1881 (County Longford) – 1972 (Enfield)
Of the Irish, Paris
THE Lombards having gone back to their land,
We, who might never flock to native land
Except like birds that fly like fugitives,
Desperately, in a wind across the sea,
We drew our brood to their forsaken nest.
The Lombards’ halls became the Irelanders',
And charity was craved for us 'twas given
In names of Almantza and Namur,
Cremona, Barcelona, Charleroi
Fields that our soldiers bled on for a cause
Not ours, under command not ours.
Our order broken, they who were our brood
Knew not themselves the heirs of noted masters,
Of Columbanus and Erigena:
We strove towards no high reach of speculation,
Towards no delivery of gestated dogma,
No resolution of age-long dispute.
Only to have a priest beside the hedges,
Baptizing, marrying,
Offering Mass within some clod-built chapel,
And to the dying the last sacrament
Conveying, no more we strove to do
We, all bare exiles, soldiers, scholars, priests.
Scheme | ABBXXXACDDXE XECCXXXXXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101010 0101011111 1111011101 0111111100 10000010101 11101110101 01010101 01001111110 011101 10101 11101011101 1101001110 101010110101 11010111010 1101 11011111010 01101001110 101011101 10110101010 1100 10010111110 0101001100 010111111 111110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 910 |
Words | 158 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 12 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 367 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 78 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 47 sec read
- 65 Views
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