Analysis of Lines on A Fly-Leaf
John Greenleaf Whittier 1807 (Haverhill) – 1892 (Hampton Falls)
I need not ask thee, for my sake,
To read a book which well may make
Its way by native force of wit
Without my manual sign to it.
Its piquant writer needs from me
No gravely masculine guaranty,
And well might laugh her merriest laugh
At broken spears in her behalf;
Yet, spite of all the critics tell,
I frankly own I like her well.
It may be that she wields a pen
Too sharply nibbed for thin-skinned men,
That her keen arrows search and try
The armor joints of dignity,
And, though alone for error meant,
Sing through the air irreverent.
I blame her not, the young athlete
Who plants her woman's tiny feet,
And dares the chances of debate
Where bearded men might hesitate,
Who, deeply earnest, seeing well
The ludicrous and laughable,
Mingling in eloquent excess
Her anger and her tenderness,
And, chiding with a half-caress,
Strives, less for her own sex than ours,
With principalities and powers,
And points us upward to the clear
Sunned heights of her new atmosphere.
Heaven mend her faults!--I will not pause
To weigh and doubt and peck at flaws,
Or waste my pity when some fool
Provokes her measureless ridicule.
Strong-minded is she? Better so
Than dulness set for sale or show,
A household folly, capped and belled
In fashion's dance of puppets held,
Or poor pretence of womanhood,
Whose formal, flavorless platitude
Is warranted from all offence
Of robust meaning's violence.
Give me the wine of thought whose head
Sparkles along the page I read,--
Electric words in which I find
The tonic of the northwest wind;
The wisdom which itself allies
To sweet and pure humanities,
Where scorn of meanness, hate of wrong,
Are underlaid by love as strong;
The genial play of mirth that lights
Grave themes of thought, as when, on nights
Of summer-time, the harmless blaze
Of thunderless heat-lightning plays,
And tree and hill-top resting dim
And doubtful on the sky's vague rim,
Touched by that soft and lambent gleam,
Start sharply outlined from their dream.
Talk not to me of woman's sphere,
Nor point with Scripture texts a sneer,
Nor wrong the manliest saint of all
By doubt, if he were here, that Paul
Would own the heroines who have lent
Grace to truth's stern arbitrament,
Foregone the praise to woman sweet,
And cast their crowns at Duty's feet;
Like her, who by her strong Appeal
Made Fashion weep and Mammon feel,
Who, earliest summoned to withstand
The color-madness of the land,
Counted her life-long losses gain,
And made her own her sisters' pain;
Or her who, in her greenwood shade,
Heard the sharp call that Freedom made,
And, answering, struck from Sappho's lyre
Of love the Tyrtman carmen's fire
Or that young girl,--Domremy's maid
Revived a nobler cause to aid,--
Shaking from warning finger-tips
The doom of her apocalypse;
Or her, who world-wide entrance gave
To the log-cabin of the slave,
Made all his want and sorrow known,
And all earth's languages his own.
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFXCGXHHIIEXJXJKKLL MMNNOOBXXXJXPPQQXXRRSSTTUUVV LLWWGBHHYYZZ1 1 2 2 3 3 2 2 4 4 5 5 6 6 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111111 11011111 11110111 011100111 11010111 11010001 0111011 11010001 11110101 11011101 11111101 11011111 10110101 01011100 01011101 11010100 1101011 11010101 01010101 1101110 11010101 01000100 10001001 01000100 01010101 111011110 10100010 01110101 1110110 101011111 11010111 11110111 010110 11011101 1111111 0110101 01011101 111110 1101010 1100111 1011100 11011111 10010111 01010111 0101011 01010110 11010100 11110111 111111 01011111 11111111 11010101 111101 01011101 01010111 1111011 1101111 11111101 11110101 1101111 11110111 11010111 11111 11011101 0111111 10110101 1101011 110010101 01010101 10011101 01010101 1010011 10111101 01001111 1101110 111111 01010111 10110101 0110010 10111101 10110101 11110101 01110011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,809 |
Words | 508 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 29, 28, 26 |
Lines Amount | 83 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 759 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 167 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:35 min read
- 45 Views
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"Lines on A Fly-Leaf" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 Sep. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22962/lines-on-a-fly-leaf>.
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