Shew Us the Father
"Shew us the Father." Chiming stars of space,And lives that fit the worlds, and means and powers,A Thought that holds them up reveal to ours--A Wisdom we have been made wise to trace.And, looking out from sweetest Nature's face,From sunsets, moonlights, rivers, hills, and flowers,Infinite love and beauty, all the hours,Woo men that love them with divinest grace;And to the depths of all the answering soulHigh Justice speaks, and calls the world her own;And yet we long, and yet we have not knownThe very Father's face who means the whole!Shew us the Father! Nature, conscience, loveRevealed in beauty, is there One above?
Words in this poem
- shew n.
- Show. [Obs. except in shewbread.]
- conscience n.
- Knowledge of one's own thoughts or actions; consciousness. [F. conscience, fr. L. conscientia, fr. consciens, p.pr. of conscire to know, to be conscious; con- + scire to know. See Science.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Shew Us the Father is in the public domain. This text is taken from The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #9984; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: George MacDonald, Shew Us the Father, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/shew-us-the-father.html, id L22407.
Form and metre
Shew Us the Father is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 ABBAABBACDDCEE spaceA · powersB · oursB · traceA · faceA · flowersB · hoursB · graceA · soulC · ownD · knownD · wholeC · loveE · aboveE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Shew us the Father." Chiming stars of space, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| And lives that fit the worlds, and means and powers, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| A Thought that holds them up reveal to ours-- | 11 | ······˘/·/˘ |
| A Wisdom we have been made wise to trace. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And, looking out from sweetest Nature's face, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| From sunsets, moonlights, rivers, hills, and flowers, | 11 | ·/·/·/˘··/˘ |
| Infinite love and beauty, all the hours, | 11 | /˘˘··/˘··/˘ |
| Woo men that love them with divinest grace; | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| And to the depths of all the answering soul | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| High Justice speaks, and calls the world her own; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And yet we long, and yet we have not known | 10 | ·········· |
| The very Father's face who means the whole! | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Shew us the Father! Nature, conscience, love | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| Revealed in beauty, is there One above? | 10 | ˘/·/˘····· |
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.