Analysis of Soliloquy
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
August and laurelled have been content to speak for an age,
and the ages that follow
Respect them for that pious fidelity;
But you have disfeatured time for timelessness.
They had heroes for companions, beautiful youths to dream of,
rose-marble-fingered
Women shed light down the great lines;
But you have invoked the slime in the skull,
The lymph in the vessels. They have shown men Gods like
racial dreams, the woman's desire,
The man's fear, the hawk-faced prophet's; but nothing
Human seems happy at the feet of yours.
Therefore though not forgotten, not loved, in gray old years
in the evening leaning
Over the gray stones of the tower-top,
You shall be called heartless and blind;
And watch new time answer old thought, not a face strange
nor a pain astonishing;
But you living be laired in the rock
That sheds pleasure and pain like hailstones.
Scheme | ABCDEFDGHIJDDJKLMJND |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1001111011111 0010110 01111100100 1111111 111010101001111 11010 10111011 1110101001 010010111111 101010010 0110111110 1011010111 111010110111 001010 1001110101 11111001 011110111011 1010100 111011001 11100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 840 |
Words | 148 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 679 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 146 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 18, 2023
- 45 sec read
- 58 Views
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