Analysis of On Observing Some Names Of Little Note Recorded In The Biographia Britannica
William Cowper 1731 (Berkhamsted) – 1800 (Dereham)
Oh fond attempt to give a deathless lot,
To names ignoble, born to be forgot!
In vain recorded in historic page,
They court the notice of a future age,
Those twinkling tiny lustres of the land
Drop one by one from fame's neglecting hand,
Lethean gulfs receive them as they fall,
And dark oblivion soon absorbs them all.
So when a child, as playful children use,
Has burnt to tinder a stale last year's news,
The flame extinct, he views the roving fire,
There goes my lady, and there goes the squire;
There goes the parson, oh! illustrious spark,
And there, scarce less illustrious, goes the clerk.
Scheme | AABBCCDDEFGHIJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111011 1101011101 0101000101 1101010101 1100101101 1111110101 11011111 01010010111 1101110101 1111001111 01011101010 1111001101 11010101001 01110100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 592 |
Words | 109 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 14 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 468 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 107 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 125 Views
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"On Observing Some Names Of Little Note Recorded In The Biographia Britannica" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/40036/on-observing-some-names-of-little-note-recorded-in-the-biographia-britannica>.
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