Analysis of Sic Vita
Henry David Thoreau 1817 (Concord) – 1862 (Concord)
I am a parcel of vain strivings tied
By a chance bond together,
Dangling this way and that, their links
Were made so loose and wide,
Methinks,
For milder weather.
A bunch of violets without their roots,
And sorrel intermixed,
Encircled by a wisp of straw
Once coiled about their shoots,
The law
By which I'm fixed.
A nosegay which Time clutched from out
Those fair Elysian fields,
With weeds and broken stems, in haste,
Doth make the rabble rout
That waste
The day he yields.
And here I bloom for a short hour unseen,
Drinking my juices up,
With no root in the land
To keep my branches green,
But stand
In a bare cup.
Some tender buds were left upon my stem
In mimicry of life,
But ah! the children will not know,
Till time has withered them,
The woe
With which they're rife.
But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.
That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours,
And by another year,
Such as God knows, with freer air,
More fruits and fairer flowers
Will bear,
While I droop here.
Scheme | ABCACB DEFDFE GHIGIH JKLJLK MNOMON PQRPRQ SXTSTX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101011101 1011010 100110111 011101 1 11010 0111000111 01001 01010111 110111 01 1111 0111111 1111 11010101 110101 11 0111 01111011001 101101 111001 111101 11 0011 1101010111 010011 11010111 111101 01 1111 1111111111 010011 11111101 110111 01 1011 11111101110 010101 11111101 1101010 11 1111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,111 |
Words | 212 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 42 |
Letters per line (avg) | 20 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 123 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:04 min read
- 143 Views
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"Sic Vita" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17345/sic-vita>.
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