Analysis of The Tower
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
One, from his high bright window in a tower,
Leans out, as evening falls,
And sees the advancing curtain of the shower
Splashing its silver on roofs and walls:
Sees how, swift as a shadow, it crosses the city,
And murmurs beyond far walls to the sea,
Leaving a glimmer of water in the dark canyons,
And silver falling from eave and tree.
One, from his high bright window, looking down,
Peers like a dreamer over the rain-bright town,
And thinks its towers are like a dream.
The western windows flame in the sun's last flare,
Pale roofs begin to gleam.
Looking down from a window high in a wall
He sees us all;
Lifting our pallid faces towards the rain,
Searching the sky, and going our ways again,
Standing in doorways, waiting under the trees . . .
There, in the high bright window he dreams, and sees
What we are blind to,-we who mass and crowd
From wall to wall in the darkening of a cloud.
The gulls drift slowly above the city of towers,
Over the roofs to the darkening sea they fly;
Night falls swiftly on an evening of rain.
The yellow lamps wink one by one again.
The towers reach higher and blacker against the sky.
Scheme | ABABCCXC DDEXE FFGHIIJJ XKGHK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111100010 111101 010010101010 101101101 111101110010 0100111101 1001011000110 010101101 1111110101 11010100111 011101101 01010100111 110111 10110101001 1111 101010100101 100101010101 1001101001 10011101101 1111111101 111100100101 0111001010110 100110100111 1110111011 0101111101 0101100100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,107 |
Words | 211 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 5, 8, 5 |
Lines Amount | 26 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 219 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 53 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:03 min read
- 99 Views
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