Analysis of Blossom
Arthur Henry Adams 1872 (Lawrence) – 1936 (Sydney, New South Wales)
A LONE rose in a garden burned—a quivering flame,
But yesterday blindly from out the bud it came;
And now an envious wind with itching fingers leant
And touched its lingering beauty, and the petals went
Upon the twilight tossing swift,
Like little dusky boats adrift.
Then in the birth and doom of that brief rose I saw
The long unrolling of creation's one vast law.
All things were blossom, and God thrilled at that flower's birth
As when from night-sheathed chaos broke this blossom-earth.
For God no large or little knows—
A universe slept in the rose.
The scattered star-mist, that dishevelled trails through Space,
Hears the low whisper of the Spring, and to its place
Whirls vastly, and its bulk with aching life is torn,
And with a pang that shakes all Space a sun is born
But God on it bestows the heed
He gives to any wayside weed.
About it bloom the planets, like a pageantry
Of rival blossoms in a garden-galaxy.
They break and wane and wither, till upon some earth,
Faded and chill and shrunken, a pallid thing has birth;
And on a world weary with strife
Creeps forth the efflorescence Life.
Strange vegetations fiercely bloom and fall from sight;
Monsters uncouth are spawned, and sink into the night;
Huge mountains blossom white beneath the ocean spray;
Vast tropics glow where once the glacier-ice held sway—
Till, like a lichen on the stone,
Comes Man, bearing a soul unknown.
The lichen spreads, and civilisations grow forlorn,
Bloom once, and, dying, blight the place where they were born.
Incomparable, unique, each in lone splendour burns;
Each bears one perfect grace that nevermore returns.
Ah! gone is sculptured Egypt—gone
The blossom that was Babylon!
The lotus of the East, the Grecian lily cold—
Each blossoms only one new beauty to unfold.
And this rich rose, the West, that opens now so vast,
Shall tell its message, then upon the night be cast.
But still God scatters through the gloom
New seeds whence nobler flowers shall bloom.
And æons rise and fade, and still the petal-years
Fall from the trembling stem of Time, that proudly rears
Space, like the last huge blossom of the far-thrown seed;
And Space itself shall wither like a trampled weed.
But in the void the Sower still
Scatters new seed, until—until…
Scheme | AAXXBBCCDDEEFFGGHHIID DJJKKLLMMGGNNXXOO PPQQRRHHSS |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0110010101001 11010110111 01110011101010 0111001000101 0101101 1101101 100101111111 01111111 110100111111 111111011101 11111101 0101001 0101111111 101101010111 110011110111 010111110111 11110101 1111011 011101010100 110100010100 110101010111 1001010010111 01011011 11011 111010111 101111010101 110101010101 110111010111 11010101 11100101 010101101 110101011101 010000110111 11101111001 11110101 0101110 010101010101 110101110101 011101110111 111101010111 1111101 111101011 01101010101 1101001111101 110111010111 010111010101 10010101 1110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,328 |
Words | 391 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 21, 17, 10 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 594 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 130 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 1:58 min read
- 139 Views
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"Blossom" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3820/blossom>.
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