Analysis of The Voice Of The Man Impatient With Visions And Utopias

Vachel Lindsay 1879 (Springfield) – 1931 (Springfield)



We find your soft Utopias as white
As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells,
O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are
How human breasts adore alarum bells.
You house us in a hive of prigs and saints
Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law.
I’d rather brood in bloody Elsinore
Or be Lear’s fool, straw-crowned amid the straw.
Promise us all our share in Agincourt
Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death,
That future ant-hills will not be too good
For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth.
Promise that through to-morrow’s spirit-war
Man’s deathless soul will hack and hew its way,
Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate
Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday.
Never a shallow jester any more!
Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain.
Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise
And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain.


Scheme ABCBDEFEGHIHFJKJFLML
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Etheree  (20%)
Metre 1111010011 1111011101 1111011111 11010111 1110011101 0101010111 110101010 1111110101 1011101010 11101110101 1101111111 110111101 101111101 111110111 1101010111 1011110 1001010101 111110101 111010101 01001110101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 846
Words 153
Sentences 9
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 20
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 672
Words per stanza (avg) 151
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
100

Vachel Lindsay

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay was an American poet. more…

All Vachel Lindsay poems | Vachel Lindsay Books

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