Analysis of If This Were Faith
God, if this were enough,
That I see things bare to the buff
And up to the buttocks in mire;
That I ask nor hope nor hire,
Nut in the husk,
Nor dawn beyond the dusk,
Nor life beyond death:
God, if this were faith!
Having felt thy wind in my face
Spit sorrow and disgrace,
Having seen thine evil doom
In Golgotha and Khartoum,
And the brutes, the work of thine hands,
Fill with injustice lands
And stain with blood the sea:
If still in my veins the glee
Of the black night and the sun
And the lost battle, run:
If, an adept,
The iniquitous lists I still accept
With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood,
And still to battle and perish for a dream of good:
God, if that were enough!
If to feel, in the ink of the slough,
And the sink of the mire,
Veins of glory and fire
Run through and transpierce and transpire,
And a secret purpose of glory in every part,
And the answering glory of battle fill my heart;
To thrill with the joy of girded men
To go on for ever and fail and go on again,
And be mauled to the earth and arise,
And contend for the shade of a word and a thing
not seen with the eyes:
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night
That somehow the right is the right
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough:
Lord, if that were enough!
Scheme | AABCDDXX EEFFGGHHIIJJKKA ABCCLLMMNXNOOAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111001 11111101 01101001 11111110 1001 110101 11011 11101 10111011 110001 1011101 0101 00101111 110101 011101 1101101 1011001 001101 1101 0111101 11011010101 0111001010111 111001 111001101 001101 1110010 11010010 00101011001001 0010010110111 11101111 1111100101101 011101001 001101101001 11101 10110101101011 1101101 00111101 111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,231 |
Words | 257 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 15, 15 |
Lines Amount | 38 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 323 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 85 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 1:17 min read
- 146 Views
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"If This Were Faith" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31610/if-this-were-faith>.
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