Analysis of Spring
Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941
A spring wind on the Bowery,
Blowing the fluff of night shelters
Off bedraggled garments,
And agitating the gutters, that eject little spirals of vapor
Like lewd growths.
Bare-legged children stamp in the puddles, splashing each other,
One - with a choir-boy's face
Twits me as I pass…
The word, like a muddied drop,
Seems to roll over and not out of
The bowed lips,
Yet dewy red
And sweetly immature.
People sniff the air with an upward look -
Even the mite of a girl
Who never plays…
Her mother smiles at her
With eyes like vacant lots
Rimming vistas of mean streets
And endless washing days…
Yet with sun on the lines
And a drying breeze.
The old candy woman
Shivers in the young wind.
Her eyes - littered with memories
Like ancient garrets,
Or dusty unaired rooms where someone died -
Ask nothing of the spring.
But a pale pink dream
Trembles about this young girl's body,
Draping it like a glowing aura.
She gloats in a mirror
Over her gaudy hat,
With its flower God never thought of…
And the dream, unrestrained,
Floats about the loins of a soldier,
Where it quivers a moment,
Warming to a crimson
Like the scarf of a toreador…
But the delicate gossamer breaks at his contact
And recoils to her in strands of shattered rose.
Scheme | AXXBX BXXXCXXX XXDBXXDXE FXEXXX XAX BXC XBXFA XX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110100 10011110 101010 01000101011010110 111 110101001010110 1101011 11111 0110101 111100111 011 1101 01001 1010111101 1001101 1101 010110 111101 110111 010101 111101 00101 011010 100011 01101100 11010 11011111 110101 10111 10111110 101101010 110010 100101 111011011 00101 101011010 111010 101010 101101 101001001111 00110011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,210 |
Words | 227 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 8, 9, 6, 3, 3, 5, 2 |
Lines Amount | 41 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 121 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 09, 2023
- 1:08 min read
- 134 Views
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"Spring" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25926/spring>.
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