Analysis of The Hymn of the Socialists
By the bodies and minds and souls that rot in a common stye
In the city’s offal-holes, where the dregs of its horrors lie —
By the prayers that bubble out, but never ascend to God,
We swear the tyrants of earth to rout, with tongue and with pen and sword!
By the child that sees the light, where the pestilent air stagnates,
By the woman, worn and white, who under the street-lamp waits,
By the horror of vice that thrives in the dens of the wretched poor,
We swear to strike when the time arrives, for all that is good and pure!
By the rights that were always ours — the rights that we ne’er enjoyed,
And the gloomy cloud that lowers on the brow of the unemployed;
By the struggling mothers and wives — by girls in the streets of sin —
We swear to strike when the time arrives, for our kind and our kith and kin!
By our burning hate for men who rob us of ours by might,
And drive to the slum and den, the poor from the sun and light,
By the hell-born greed that drives our sons o’er the world to roam,
We swear to strike when the time arrives, and strike for our friends and home.
By the little of manhood left in a world of want and sin,
By the rift in the dark cloud’s brow where the light still struggles in,
By the love that scarce survives in a stream that is sluggish and thin,
We swear to work till the time arrives for ourselves and our kind and kin.
The little of love may dry in its stream that scarcely flows,
The little of manhood die and the rift in the dark clouds close,
And hope may vanish from earth and all that is pure and bright,
But we swear to strike eer that time has birth with the whole of our gathered might!
Scheme | XXXXAAXX BBCC DDEE CCCC AADD |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001011100101 0011110111101 10111011100111 1101011111101101 101110110111 10101011100111 1010111100110101 1111101011111101 101101100111101 001011101011001 1010010011100111 1111101011101010101 1101011111111011 01101010110101 101111110110111 11111010101110101 10101110011101 101001111011100 1011101001111001 1111101011001010101 01011110111101 01011100100111 01110110111101 1111111111101110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic octameter |
Characters | 1,641 |
Words | 328 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 53 |
Words per line (avg) | 14 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 254 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 65 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:38 min read
- 127 Views
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"The Hymn of the Socialists" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18015/the-hymn-of-the-socialists>.
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