Analysis of Ballade Of Truisms



Gold or silver, every day,
Dies to gray.
There are knots in every skein.
Hours of work and hours of play
Fade away
Into one immense Inane.
Shadow and substance, chaff and grain,
Are as vain
As the foam or as the spray.
Life goes crooning, faint and fain,
One refrain:
'If it could be always May!'

Though the earth be green and gay,
Though, they say,
Man the cup of heaven may drain;
Though, his little world to sway,
He display
Hoard on hoard of pith and brain:
Autumn brings a mist and rain
That constrain

Him and his to know decay,
Where undimmed the lights that wane
Would remain,
If it could be always May.

YEA, alas, must turn to NAY,
Flesh to clay.
Chance and Time are ever twain.
Men may scoff, and men may pray,
But they pay
Every pleasure with a pain.
Life may soar, and Fortune deign
To explain
Where her prizes hide and stay;
But we lack the lusty train
We should gain,
If it could be always May.

Time, the pedagogue, his cane
Might retain,
But his charges all would stray
Truanting in every lane -
Jack with Jane -
If it could be always May.


Scheme aabaabbbabbA aabaabbb abbA aabaabbbabbA bbabbA
Poetic Form
Metre 11101001 111 11101001 101101011 101 0110101 1010101 111 1011101 1110101 101 111111 1011101 111 10111011 1110111 101 1111101 1010101 101 1011101 110111 101 111111 1011111 111 1011101 1110111 111 10010101 1110101 101 1010101 1110101 111 111111 10111 101 1110111 101001 111 111111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 1,025
Words 208
Sentences 12
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 12, 8, 4, 12, 6
Lines Amount 42
Letters per line (avg) 19
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 162
Words per stanza (avg) 41
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

1:02 min read
132

William Ernest Henley

 · 1903 · Woking

William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem "Invictus". more…

All William Ernest Henley poems | William Ernest Henley Books

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