Analysis of To Mr Brown On His Book Against T---

Thomas Parnell 1679 (Dublin) – 1718



Giddy wth fond ambition, mad wth pride,
Apostate angells once ev'n heavn defi'de;
Avenging heavn its hottest bolts prepard,
And hell and thunder provd their sad reward.

Yet foolish man by no example won,
perverse in ill, dare rashly venture on,
Wildly rebells, calls reason to his aid,
And uses it on him who reason made.
For crimes like this what vengeance is in store?
What but the same wch heaven showrd down on fiends before?
What milder could wee hope wee should receive?
But god is kindly willing to forgive,
He usd his Justice then, but mercy now,
Was then wth thunder armd, but now wth you:
He bid you rise truths champion, & oppose
Wth their own arms wth reason his audacious foes.
You take ye lists, & in your gods defence,
Unravell all their specious arguments,
Who lull their hearers with a show of sense,
In artfull words their best objections place,
and in fair terms their sly delusions dress;
this guilding you remove, & streight we see
What nothings all their demonstrations be.

Thus when a fiend upon their sabbats cheats
The witches he has made wth fancyd treats,
The air condenses round to costly meates:
But if a stranger who by chance has viewd
their rites, dares venture to be boldly good,
No more the pleasing Phantome does remain,
But to its former air dissolves again.


Scheme AAAX XXBBCCXXXXDDEXEXXFF GGDAXXX
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 1011010111 010111111 010111011 0101011101 1101110101 010111101 101110111 0101111101 1111110101 1101110111101 1101111101 1111010101 1111011101 1111011111 1111110001 111111010101 111101101 11110100 1111010111 011110101 0011110101 11101111 110110101 110101111 010111111 01111101 1101011111 1111011101 110101101 1111010101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,274
Words 233
Sentences 9
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 19, 7
Lines Amount 30
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 341
Words per stanza (avg) 77
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:10 min read
75

Thomas Parnell

Thomas Parnell was an Anglo-Irish poet and clergyman who was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He was the son of Thomas Parnell of Maryborough, Queen's County now Port Laoise, County Laoise}, a prosperous landowner who had been a loyal supporter of Cromwell during the English Civil War and moved to Ireland after the restoration of the monarchy. Thomas was educated at Trinity College, Dublin and collated archdeacon of Clogher in 1705. He however spent much of his time in London, where he participated with Pope, Swift and others in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator and aiding Pope in his translation of The Iliad. He was also one of the so-called "Graveyard poets": his 'A Night-Piece on Death,' widely considered the first "Graveyard School" poem, was published posthumously in Poems on Several Occasions, collected and edited by Alexander Pope and is thought by some scholars to have been published in December of 1721 (although dated in 1722 on its title page, the year accepted by The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature; see 1721 in poetry, 1722 in poetry). It is said of his poetry 'it was in keeping with his character, easy and pleasing, ennunciating the common places with felicity and grace. more…

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