Analysis of Our Lady
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge 1861 (London) – 1907
MOTHER of God! no lady thou:
Common woman of common earth
Our Lady ladies call thee now,
But Christ was never of gentle birth;
A common man of the common earth.
For God’s ways are not as our ways:
The noblest lady in the land
Would have given up half her days,
Would have cut off her right hand,
To bear the child that was God of the land.
Never a lady did He choose,
Only a maid of low degree,
So humble she might not refuse
The carpenter of Galilee:
A daughter of the people, she.
Out she sang the song of her heart.
Never a lady so had sung.
She knew no letters, had no art;
To all mankind, in woman’s tongue,
Hath Israelitish Mary sung.
And still for men to come she sings,
Nor shall her singing pass away.
‘He hath fillàd the hungry with good things’—
O listen, lords and ladies gay!—
‘And the rich He hath sent empty away.’
Scheme | ABABB CDCDD EFEFF GHGHH IJIJJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 10111101 10101101 101010111 111101101 010110101 111111101 01010001 11101101 1111011 1101111101 10010111 10011101 11011101 0100110 01010101 11101101 10010111 11110111 1111011 11101 01111111 11010101 1111010111 11010101 0011111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 848 |
Words | 168 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 25 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 126 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 32 Views
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