LOVER’S PETITION. Ralph Waldo
Emerson
Good Heart, that ownest all!
I ask a modest boon and small:
Not of lands and towns the gift,—
Too large a load for me to lift,—
But for one proper creature, 5
Which geographic eye,
Sweeping the map of Western earth,
Or the Atlantic coast, from Maine
To Powhatan’s domain,
Could not descry. 10
Is ’t much to ask in all thy huge
creation,
So trivial a part,—
A solitary heart?
Yet count me not of spirit mean,
Or mine a mean demand, 15
For ’t is the concentration
And worth of all the land,
The sister of the sea,
The daughter of the strand,
Composed of air and light, 20
And of the swart earth-might.
So little to thy poet’s prayer
Thy large bounty well can spare.
And yet I think, if she were gone,
The world were better left alone. 25
The
typographical level of the poem discloses that it is written in verse rather
than prose mode, that it is strophic rather than stanzaic, that all lines begin with initial capitals and are left-hand justified. This 25-line poem is a single strophe in length.
On the sonic level
we determine that the prosody of the poem is variable accentual-syllabics and
that the running foot is in general iambic. Line lengths range from dimeter
(lines 6 & 10), through trimeter (1, 5, 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
& 21) and tetrameter (2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 14, 22), to pentameter (line 11 only).
The poem begins with two couplets rhyming aa & bb, then shifts to random rhymes generally, although couplets reappear here and there, as in lines 8 & 9, 12 & 13, 20 & 21, and the poem ends with three couplets, the last of which, lines 24 & 25, do not rhyme but consonate (gone/alone). The rhyme pattern is aabbcdceedfgghifid (line 18 consonates with line 6) ijjkkll. The consonance between lines 6 and 18 is at such a distance, however, that one may question whether they have a sonic relationship at all and may in fact be considered unrhymed lines. Another consonance exists between lines 5 (creature) and 7 (earth), but because the first word is a falling rhythm (an amphibrach: see below), it would have to be considered a “light consonance,” a stressed syllable consonating with an unstressed syllable.
The poem has many metrical variations beginning with line 1 which has an initial spondee and continues with two iambs. Line 3 is acephalous, beginning with a headless iamb and continuing with three iambs. Line 4, like line 1, has a spondee substitution in the first foot; line 5 begins with a double iamb and ends with an amphibrach — a feminine or falling rhythm, of which there are several in the poem: lines 11, 16, & 22. Line 6 has a spondee substitution in the first foot; lines 7 & 8 substitute trochees in the first foot. The first syllable of line 10 is demoted from primary to secondary stress because it is the center of three stressed syllables (domain / Could not) and the following line 11 is the only pentameter line in the poem, but it is not perfect because, like lines 5 and 16, it ends with an amphibrach (creation, x’x) and is therefore eleven syllables long; it is an interesting line almost at the center of the poem.
Line 12, which is
trimeter, has two substitutions: a spondee in the first foot and, depending
upon whether one pronounces “ial” in trivial, as a two syllable elision (triv-yal) or as three syllables (tri-vi-al),
either an anapest substitution in a dimeter line in the former case, or a
promotion of the unstressed al syllable in a trimeter line in the latter. If it is a
dimeter line, there are no iambs in it at all; if it is a trimeter line, two of
the three feet are iambs and it is normative.
Line 13 and 15 are
perfect iambic trimeter and line 14, which they enclose, is perfect iambic
tetrameter. Line 16, which has
been discussed as ending in an amphibrach, is iambic trimeter but seven
syllables long. Line 17 is perfect iambic trimeter again followed by another
trimeter line but one that contains a promotion in the fourth syllable like the
following lines 18 and 19 which are metrically identical, then back to a
perfect trimeter line in line 20. Line 21, also trimeter, nevertheless has two
variations: a promotion in the second syllable and a demotion in the fifth.
Line 22 is iambic
tetrameter with a promotion in the fourth syllable and an elision, “prayer” (prair), in the eighth. Line 23 is highly unusual: it
begins with an iamb, but the second and third verse feet are trochees, and the
fourth foot is a tailless trochee; thus, the line is normative trochaic, not
iambic.
The last two lines, although they are perfect iambic tetrameter, unlike most of the rest of the lines, make a couplet that is unusual also in that the lines consonate (gone/alone) rather than true-rhyme. Other lines that consonate are 5 & 7 (creature / earth), and 6 & 18 (eye / sea). Lines 11 &16 are falling rhymes, as noted, but they also exhibit consonantal echo (the hard cees which are not alliterations because one is in a stressed syllable and the other in an unstressed syllable). Alliterations occur in several lines as in 15 (mine / mean), 18 (sister / sea) and 22 (poet’s / prayer) and between lines as in lines 3 & 4 (lands – large / load), 7 & 8 (map - Maine).
The general form
of the poem is what the title says it is; it is a lyric plea for love by a
lover to the object of his affections written in a nonce strophe.
The sensory level of the poem is simple, its primary trope being descriptive rather than similetic or metaphoric. There are a few rhetorical tropes as well, as for instance allusion (Powhatan’s domain) and hyperbole (sister of the sea).
The tradition of the poem is standard American Romanticism that prevailed in the nineteenth century; it exhibits an atmosphere of yearning, and its mood is hopeful.
The ideational
level of the poem is equally simple. The subject is love, and the schemas are
inclusive rather than exclusive, for the appeal is to everyone notwithstanding
the egopoetic viewpoint, subjective syntax, and literary level of diction, for
the speaker may be any male addressing his beloved. The style in which it is
written is high: nineteenth century Romantic period style (ownest all,
modest boon and small, of lands and towns the gift, of spirit mean, etc.). The theme may be expressed in the sentence,
“Grant me your love.”
Fusionally, the
poem is a lyric. Although the idea expressed in the poem is ordinary, even
simple, it is nevertheless primary, for it is basically a lyric argument in
which a lover pleads with his beloved to reciprocate that love. The lyricism
supports the argument adequately, but this is not one of the great Romantic
love poems.
Visions
and Revisions of American Poetry, Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, UArkansasPress 1986. Paperback, $12.95. 1986 Melville Cane Award of the
Poetry Society of America. ORDER FROM AMAZON
