Analysis of In War-Time: A Prayer Of The Understanding
Sydney Thompson Dobell 1824 (Kent) – 1874
Lo, this is night. Hast thou, oh sun, refused
Thy countenance, or is thy golden arm
Shortened, or from thy shining place in heaven
Art thou put down and lost? Neither hast thou
Refused thy constant face, nor is thine arm
Shortened, nor from thy principality
Art thou deposed, oh sun. Ours, ours, the sin,
The sorrow. From thy steadfast noon we turned
Into the eastern shade-and this is night.
Yet so revolves the axle of the world,
And by that brief aversion wheels us round
To morn, and rolls us on the larger paths
Of annual duty. Thou observant moon,
That dancest round the seasonable earth
As David round the ark, but half thy ring
In process, yet, complete, the circular whole
Promotes thee, and expedes thy right advance,
And all thy great desire of summer signs.
And thou, oh sun, our centre, who thyself
Art satellite, and, conscious of the far
Archelion, in obedience of free will
And native duty, as the good man walks
Among the children's faces, with thine house
About thee, least and greatest, first and last,
Makest of the blue eternal holiday
Thy glad perambulation; and thou, far
Archelion, feudatory still, of one
Not sovran nor in fee of paramount power;
Moons round your worlds, worlds round your suns, suns round
Such satraps as in orderly degree
Confess a lordlier regent and pervade
A vaster cycle-ye, so moved, commoved,
Revolving and convolving, turn the heavens
Upon the pivot of that summery star,
Centre of all we know: and thou, oh star,
Centre of all we know, chief crown of crowns,
Who art the one in all, the all in one,
And seest the ordered whole-nought uninvolved
But all involved to one direct result
Of multiform volution-in one pomp,
One power, one tune, one time, upon one path
Move with thee moving, Thou, amid thy host
Marchest-ah whither?
--Oh God, before Whom
We marshal thus Thy legioned works to take
The secret of Thy counsel, and array
Congress and progress, and, with multitude
As conquerors and to conquer, in consent
Of universal law, approach Thy bound,
Thine immemorial bound, and at Thy face
Heaven and earth flee away; oh Thou Lord God,
Whether oh absolute existence, Thou,
The Maker, makest, and this fair we see
Be but the mote and dust of that unseen
Unsought unsearchable; or whether Thou
Whose goings forth are from of old, around
Thy going in mere effluence without care
Breathest creation out into the cold
Beyond Thee, and, within Thine ambient breath,
So walkest everlasting as we walk
The unportioned snows; or whether, meditating
Eternity, self-centred, self-fulfilled,
Self-continent, Thou thinkest and we live,
A little while forgettest and we fade,
Rememberest and we are, and this bright vision
Wherein we move, nay all our total sum
And story, be to Thee as to a man
When in the drop and rising of a lid
Lo the swift rack and fashion of a dream,
No more; oh Thou inscrutable, whose ways
Are not as ours, whose form we know not, voice
Hear not, true work behold not, mystery
Conceive not, who-as thunder shakes the world
And rings a silver bell-hast sometime moved
The tongue of man, but in Thy proper speech
Wearest a human language on a word
As limpets on a rock, who, as Eternal,
Omnipotential, Infinite, Allwise,
In measure of Thine operation hast
No prime or term, in subject as in scheme
No final end, in eidol as in act
Nought but the perfect God; oh Thou Supreme,
Inaudible, Invisible, Unknown,
Thy will be done.
Scheme | ABCDBEXXX FGHXXIXXXJKXXXLMKCNGEOAXKKXCXXXXXNXXMXXGXXDEXDGXXXXIXJOCXXXPXXEFXXXXHLPXPXC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111111101 1100111101 10111101010 1111011011 0111011111 101110100 110111101001 010111111 0101010111 1101010101 0111010111 1101110101 11001010101 111010001 1101011111 0110101001 011011101 01110101101 0111101011 110010101 100100111 0101010111 0101010111 0111010101 110101010 111011 11111 11010111010 1111111111 111010001 010110001 01101111 010011010 010101111 1011110111 1011111111 1101010101 0101011001 1101110101 111011 11011110111 1111010111 1110 11011 110111111 0101110001 10010110 11000110001 101010111 1010010111 10011011111 101100101 010101111 1101011101 111101 1101111101 11001100011 101010101 01100111001 11010111 011110100 010011101 110011011 01011011 101101110 01111110101 0101111101 1001010101 1011010101 1111010011 11110111111 1111011100 0111110101 010101111 0111101101 101010101 11010111010 11001 010110101 1111001101 110101101 1100111101 0100010001 1111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 3,312 |
Words | 598 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 75 |
Lines Amount | 84 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,331 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 298 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:59 min read
- 33 Views
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"In War-Time: A Prayer Of The Understanding" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/35899/in-war-time%3A-a-prayer-of-the-understanding>.
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