Analysis of Sunset
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 (Prague) – 1926 (Montreux)
Slowly the west reaches for clothes of new colors
which it passes to a row of ancient trees.
You look, and soon these two worlds both leave you
one part climbs toward heaven, one sinks to earth.
leaving you, not really belonging to either,
not so hopelessly dark as that house that is silent,
not so unswervingly given to the eternal as that thing
that turns to a star each night and climbs-
leaving you (it is impossible to untangle the threads)
your own life, timid and standing high and growing,
so that, sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out,
one moment your life is a stone in you, and the next, a star.
Scheme | XXXX XXAX XAXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 100110111110 11101011101 1101111111 11101101111 101110010110 1110011111110 1111010010111 111011101 101110100101001 111100101010 11011001101 110111010100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 612 |
Words | 115 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 12 |
Letters per line (avg) | 40 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 162 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 202 Views
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"Sunset" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/29714/sunset>.
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