Analysis of To the Unknown Goddess
Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) – 1936 (London)
Will you conquer my heart with your beauty; my sould going out from afar?
Shall I fall to your hand as a victim of crafty and cautions shikar?
Have I met you and passed you already, unknowing, unthinking and blind?
Shall I meet you next session at Simla, O sweetest and best of your kind?
Does the P. and O. bear you to meward, or, clad in short frocks in the West,
Are you growing the charms that shall capture and torture the heart in my breast?
Will you stay in the Plains till September -- my passion as warm as the day?
Will you bring me to book on the Mountains, or where the thermantidotes play?
When the light of your eyes shall make pallid the mean lesser lights I pursue,
And the charm of your presence shall lure me from love of the gay "thirteen-two";
When the peg and the pig-skin shall please not; when I buy me Calcutta-build clothes;
When I quit the Delight of Wild Asses; foreswearing the swearing of oaths ;
As a deer to the hand of the hunter when I turn 'mid the gibes of my friends;
When the days of my freedom are numbered, and the life of the bachelor ends.
Ah, Goddess! child, spinster, or widow -- as of old on Mars Hill whey they raised
To the God that they knew not an altar -- so I, a young Pagan, have praised
The Goddess I know not nor worship; yet, if half that men tell me be true,
You will come in the future, and therefore these verses are written to you.
Scheme | AA BB CC DD EE FF GG HH EE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Couplet |
Metre | 111011111011101101 11111110101100101 111101101001001001 11111101111001111 10101111111011001 111001111001001011 111001101011011101 111111101011011 101111111001101101 001111011111101111 101001111111111011 1110011110101011 1011011010111101111 1011110110001101001 110110110111111111 101111111011011011 010111110111111111 11100100111011011 |
Characters | 1,380 |
Words | 273 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 59 |
Words per line (avg) | 15 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 119 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 76 Views
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