Analysis of Scotland 1941
Edwin Muir 1887 (Orkney) – 1959 (Cambridge)
We were a tribe, a family, a people.
Wallace and Bruce guard now a painted field,
And all may read the folio of our fable,
Peruse the sword, the sceptre and the shield.
A simple sky roofed in that rustic day,
The busy corn-fields and the haunted holms,
The green road winding up the ferny brae.
But Knox and Melville clapped their preaching palms
And bundled all the harvesters away,
Hoodicrow Peden in the blighted corn
Hacked with his rusty beak the starving haulms.
Out of that desolation we were born.
Courage beyond the point and obdurate pride
Made us a nation, robbed us of a nation.
Defiance absolute and myriad-eyed
That could not pluck the palm plucked our damnation.
We with such courage and the bitter wit
To fell the ancient oak of loyalty,
And strip the peopled hill and altar bare,
And crush the poet with an iron text,
How could we read our souls and learn to be?
Here a dull drove of faces harsh and vexed,
We watch our cities burning in their pit,
To salve our souls grinding dull lucre out,
We, fanatics of the frustrate and the half,
Who once set Purgatory Hill in doubt.
Now smoke and dearth and money everywhere,
Mean heirlooms of each fainter generation,
And mummied housegods in their musty niches,
Burns and Scott, sham bards of a sham nation,
And spiritual defeat wrapped warm in riches,
No pride but pride of pelf. Long since the young
Fought in great bloody battles to carve out
This towering pulpit of the Golden Calf,
Montrose, Mackail, Argyle, perverse and brave,
Twisted the stream, unhooped the ancestral hill.
Never had Dee or Don or Yarrow or Till
Huddled such thriftless honour in a grave.
Such wasted bravery idle as a song,
Such hard-won ill might prove Time's verdict wrong,
And melt to pity the annalist's iron tongue.
Scheme | ABABCDCDCEDE FGFGHIJKIKHLML JGDGDNLMOPPOQQN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10010100010 1001110101 01110111010 0101010001 0101101101 0101100101 011101011 1101011101 0101010001 11000101 1111010101 111010101 10010101001 11010111010 0101001001 111101110010 1111000101 1101011100 0101010101 0101011101 11111010111 1011110101 11101010011 1110110111 1010101001 111100101 110101010 111110010 011011010 1011110110 010000111010 1111111101 1011010111 11001010101 1110101 1001100101 10111111011 10111001 11010010101 1111111101 0111001101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,726 |
Words | 316 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 14, 15 |
Lines Amount | 41 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 465 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 105 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 19, 2023
- 1:35 min read
- 101 Views
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"Scotland 1941" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10116/scotland-1941>.
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