Analysis of A Word To The Calvinists
Anne Brontë 1820 (Thornton, West Yorkshire) – 1849 (Scarborough, North Yorkshire)
You may rejoice to think yourselves secure,
You may be grateful for the gift divine,
That grace unsought which made your black hearts pure
And fits your earthborn souls in Heaven to shine.
But is it sweet to look around and view
Thousands excluded from that happiness,
Which they deserve at least as much as you,
Their faults not greater nor their virtues less?
And wherefore should you love your God the more
Because to you alone his smiles are given,
Because He chose to pass the many o'er
And only bring the favoured few to Heaven?
And wherefore should your hearts more grateful prove
Because for all the Saviour did not die?
Is yours the God of justice and of love
And are your bosoms warm with charity?
Say does your heart expand to all mankind
And would you ever to your neighbour do,
-- The weak, the strong, the enlightened and the blind -
As you would have your neighbour do to you?
And, when you, looking on your fellow men
Behold them doomed to endless misery,
How can you talk of joy and rapture then?
May God withhold such cruel joy from me!
That none deserve eternal bliss I know:
Unmerited the grace in mercy given,
But none shall sink to everlasting woe
That have not well deserved the wrath of Heaven.
And, O! there lives within my heart
A hope long nursed by me,
(And should its cheering ray depart
How dark my soul would be)
That as in Adam all have died
In Christ shall all men live
And ever round his throne abide
Eternal praise to give;
That even the wicked shall at last
Be fitted for the skies
And when their dreadful doom is past
To life and light arise.
I ask not how remote the day
Nor what the sinner's woe
Before their dross is purged away,
Enough for me to know
That when the cup of wrath is drained,
The metal purified,
They'll cling to what they once disdained,
And live by Him that died.
Scheme | ABABCXCX XDXD XXXE FCFC GEGE HDHD IEIE JXJX KLKL MHMH NJNJ |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101110101 1111010101 111111111 0111101011 1111110101 1001011100 1101111111 1111011101 011111101 01110111110 01111101010 0101011110 011111101 011101111 1101110011 011111100 1111011111 011101111 01010010001 111111111 0111011101 0111110100 1111110101 1101110111 1101010111 10101010 111110101 11110101110 01110111 011111 01110101 111111 11010111 011111 01011101 010111 110010111 110101 01110111 110101 11110101 11011 01111101 011111 11011111 01010 11111101 011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,794 |
Words | 346 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 131 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:44 min read
- 66 Views
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"A Word To The Calvinists" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3132/a-word-to-the-calvinists>.
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