Analysis of Quandary
Robert Frost 1874 (San Francisco) – 1963 (Boston)
Never have I been glad or sad
That there was such a thing as bad.
There had to be, I understood,
For there to have been any good.
It was by having been contrasted
That good and bad so long had lasted.
That's why discrimination reigns.
That's why we need a lot of brains
If only to discriminate
'Twixt what to love and what to hate.
To quote the oracle at Delphi,
Love thy neighbor as thyself, aye,
And hate him as thyself thou hatest.
There quandary is at its greatest.
We learned from the forbidden fruit
For brains there is no substitute.
'Unless it's sweetbreads, ' you suggest
With innuendo I detest.
You drive me to confess in ink:
Once I was fool enough to think
That brains and sweetbreads were the same,
Till I was caught and put to shame,
First by a butcher, then a cook,
Then by a scientific book.
But ' twas by making sweetbreads do
I passed with such a high I.Q.
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFAGHHIIJJKKLLMJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10111111 11110111 1111101 11111101 111101010 110111110 1100101 11110111 1101010 11110111 110100110 1110111 0111111 110011110 11101001 1111110 0111101 10010101 11110101 11110111 1101001 11110111 11010101 1100101 1111011 1111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 866 |
Words | 171 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 26 |
Lines Amount | 26 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 677 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 168 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 323 Views
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"Quandary" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/30894/quandary>.
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