The Life Theoretic
While I have been fumbling over booksAnd thinking about God and the Devil and all,Other young men have been battling with the daysAnd others have been kissing the beautiful women.They have brazen faces like battering-rams.But I who think about books and such--I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling,And the women palsy me with fear.But when it comes to fumbling over booksAnd thinking about God and the Devil and all,Why, there I am.But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it,Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows.
About this text
The Life Theoretic is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #24364; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Aldous Huxley, The Life Theoretic, in The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #24364, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/huxley-defeat-of-youth/the-life-theoretic.html, id L22029.
Form and metre
The Life Theoretic is 13 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AB------AB--- booksA · allB · days · women · rams · such · struggling · fear · booksA · allB · am · it · knows
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| While I have been fumbling over books | 10 | ····/˘˘··· |
| And thinking about God and the Devil and all, | 11 | ·/˘·····/·· |
| Other young men have been battling with the days | 11 | /˘····/˘··· |
| And others have been kissing the beautiful women. | 12 | ·/˘··/˘·/˘/˘ |
| They have brazen faces like battering-rams. | 10 | ··/˘/˘·/˘· |
| But I who think about books and such-- | 9 | ········· |
| I crumble to impotent dust before the struggling, | 12 | ·/˘·/˘····/˘ |
| And the women palsy me with fear. | 9 | ··/˘/˘··· |
| But when it comes to fumbling over books | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| And thinking about God and the Devil and all, | 11 | ·/˘·····/·· |
| Why, there I am. | 4 | ···· |
| But perhaps the battering-rams are in the right of it, | 13 | ·˘/·/˘······· |
| Perhaps, perhaps ... God knows. | 6 | ˘/˘/·· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.