Analysis of Barbarians.

Robert Crawford 1959 (Bellshill)



As the crinoid star-fish to the sea-base
By his stem fixed draws bare subsistence in
His straitened sphere, as in the sunless ooze
He turns on his long jointed pedicle,
So are half-bruted men, barbarian-brained,
Endued with scarce more power to see and hear
The visions and the rumours of the world,
So poorly apt to think and feel and know,
As each turns on his dark time-pivot in
A universal ignorance, as it were
Far back in the beginning of the world;
Disjointed and dismembered in the mind,
And in the spirit so confused and foul,
With no sign of truth's authenticity,
As nature in their origin had jarred
The primal tone of man.


Scheme ABCDEFGHBIGJDKLM
Poetic Form
Metre 101111011 1111110100 11110011 11111101 1111101001 01111101101 010000101 1101110101 1111111100 0010100110 1100010101 0100010001 0001010101 111110100 1100110011 010111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 627
Words 117
Sentences 2
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 16
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 502
Words per stanza (avg) 115
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

35 sec read
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Robert Crawford

Robert Crawford FRSE FBA is a Scottish poet, scholar and critic. He is currently Professor of English at the University of St Andrews.  more…

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