Analysis of The Power and Majesty of Poetry
“All the world’s a stage,”
the Bard emphatically declared.
“And all the men and women…
merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances.
And one man in his time plays many parts…
His acts being seven ages…”
We, all of us, like actors…
We, all of us, like actresses,
have our exits and our entrances.
And we indeed play many parts.
We wear a mask upon our faces…
That is the mask of our personas.
We are all superficial beings…
possessed with very deep interiors.
And yet we oft so play the part…
of being merely puppets…
pulled by the strings of our own accord.
The irony of being our own puppeteers.
We are, and yet we are not,
altogether in one fell swoop,
what we would feign to be…
Fallen angels seeking to be exalted.
Adamic beings we are as castaways.
Cast out from our Edenic legacies.
Once whole, now torn apart.
As refracted splintered shards of glass.
The English Bard of Stratford-on-Avon,
in the flowing glimmering ripples,
saw himself as image reflected
on a moving stage that he called Life.
And in this image of himself…
In this rippling Avon image,
he viewed mankind along with him…
He saw what we too now all see.
A Cartesian view is what he had…
His cogitation of the human species.
Rene Descartes said much alike:
“Cogito ergo sum…”
(“I think therefore I am.”)
The poet and the philosopher…
Two minds with similar thoughts.
Though set apart by time and space,
with similar cogitation.
Their thoughts as independent gifts,
configuring their views of life.
Their private thoughts enmeshed with ours.
Their thoughts becoming now our own.
A Shakespearean world we occupy
of all the world as being a stage.
Such stagecraft of his bewitches us
like puppets in a cauldron brewed.
A world brewed up
from sheer imagination
by poets and philosophers…
By artists of all stripes and colors.
That is the power of the poet’s craft,
to turn a dream into reality.
Transform himself…
And in this solo act of transformation,
transform the world.
And all of us along with it.
That is the power that a poet has.
That is the Godly power of creation.
Out of sheer darkness…
Out of seeming Nothingness,
to bear light…
dazzling shining light.
Light of brilliance to enlighten us.
Dazzling light of creation.
Light to endow the shadows we cast,
with sense of our reflection.
So now as wizened shadows,
we are gifted to behold with sight,
the outer reflection of ourselves,
reflecting on our hidden inner selves.
Reflection of our outer selves as puppets,
reflecting on the hidden sacred selves
of our own divinity…
Our outer darkness beholding inner light.
That is the power of poetry.
That is the majesty of poetry.
To elevate the lower self of puppetry
into a higher self of divine being.
To transform us from being puppets
into kings and queens of noble rank.
That is the alchemy of poetry.
To restore the lost to find the Self.
And in this noble act of passage,
to reclaim our divine birthright.
To remove ourselves from brokenesss.
The outer self in union…
once more with its royal inner self…
A reflected hidden self…
restored to wholeness.
Scheme | AXBCDED CXDE DCXC FGXX XXHX XIFX XXXJ KLXH XIXXX XXXB XJCX XAMX XBCC XHKBXX XBMMNN MBXB XNOO GOHN HHHX GXHK LNC BKKX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 10101 01010001 0101010 1010 1111001100 0110111101 11101010 1111110 11111100 11010010100 01011101 1101011010 11011101 11101010 0111010100 01111101 1101010 1101110101 0100110101001 1101111 0100111 111111 10101011010 11011110 111101100 111101 1110111 0101110110 001010010 101110010 101011111 00110101 011001010 11110111 11111111 001011111 1010101010 01011101 1101 11111 010000100 1111001 11011101 1100010 1110101 01001111 110101110 110101101 01001110 110111001 111111 11000101 0111 110010 11000100 110111010 1101010101 11010110 0101 001111010 0101 01110111 1101010101 11010101010 11110 1110100 111 100101 111010101 10011010 11010111 11110010 111101 111010111 0100101001 01011010101 010110101110 0101010101 11010100 101010010101 110101100 1101001100 11001011100 01010110110 101111010 011011101 1101001100 101011101 001101110 10110011 10100111 0101010 111110101 0010101 01110 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 3,136 |
Words | 625 |
Sentences | 46 |
Stanzas | 22 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4, 6, 6, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 4 |
Lines Amount | 95 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 109 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
About this poem
This poem is largely influenced by the phrase “All the world’s a stage” that introduces a monologue from the pastoral drama-comedy of William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. While in this play Shakespeare employs the character Jacques, in a speech in Act II Scene VII, Line 139, to compare the world to a stage, and to conceive of life itself as having seven stages or acts, this poem reexamines the play from the perspective of the poet’s internal motivations who, upon reflecting on the perceived stages or acts of his own life, amplifies that experience and insight on the foibles and eccentricities of the human experience to discover the existential goal of life and thereby repair or remedy our brokenness and in this act to restore the self to wholeness. This poem declares that, psychologically, that goal is the eternally sustaining ambitious human endeavor. more »
Written on September 08, 2023
Submitted by karlcfolkes on September 08, 2023
- 3:07 min read
- 314 Views
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"The Power and Majesty of Poetry" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/168587/the-power-and-majesty-of-poetry>.
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