Analysis of Chanukah
Marion Hartog 1821 ( Portsmouth, ) – 1907 (Kilburn)
Down-trodden ’neath the Syrian heel
Did Zion’s sceptre lie;
Her shrine, where once God’s glory flung
Its radiance, now wildly rung
With pagan revelry.
And in the Temple’s secret place,
Where once the High Priest bowed
In homage to the King of kings,
The vilest of all earthly things
Was worshipped by the crowd.
And still the flaming altar smoked,
The priest was at his post,
Commanding Israel’s sons to pray
To images of stone and clay,
Or swell the holocaust.
Seven glorious brethren there had stood,
Unflinching, side by side,
And, sooner than yield up their faith,
Had dared the faggot’s burning breath,
And willing martyrs died.
Not unavenged and not in vain
Fell that undaunted race;
For Judas, with his patriot band,
Drove the oppressors from the land,
And cleansed the holy place.
Then the Menorah once again
Illumed the holy shrine,
One little flask of sacred oil,
Saved unpolluted from the spoil
Supplied the light divine.
Full twenty centuries have rolled
The gulf of Time adown,
Since those heroic Maccabees,
The victims of Epiphanes,
Assumed the martyr’s crown.
And still the Festival of Lights
Recalls those deeds of yore
That make our history’s page sublime
And live for evermore.
Scheme | XXAAX BCDDC XXEEX XFXXF GBHHB XIJJI XGXBX XKXK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110101001 110101 01111101 11001101 110100 00010101 110111 01010111 0111101 110101 01010101 011111 0101111 11001101 11010 1010010111 010111 01011111 1101101 010101 110101 110101 110111001 10010101 010101 10010101 10101 11011101 11101 010101 11010011 01111 1101010 01011 010101 01010011 11111 11101101 01110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,253 |
Words | 202 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 4 |
Lines Amount | 39 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 119 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 25 |
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"Chanukah" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/54050/chanukah>.
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