Analysis of Caroline Branson
Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)
With our hearts like drifting suns, had we but walked,
As often before, the April fields till star-light
Silkened over with viewless gauze the darkness
Under the cliff, our trysting place in the wood,
Where the brook turns! Had we but passed from wooing
Like notes of music that run together, into winning,
In the inspired improvisation of love!
But to put back of us as a canticle ended
The rapt enchantment of the flesh,
In which our souls swooned, down, down,
Where time was not, nor space, nor ourselves --
Annihilated in love!
To leave these behind for a room with lamps:
And to stand with our Secret mocking itself,
And hiding itself amid flowers and mandolins,
Stared at by all between salad and coffee.
And to see him tremble, and feel myself
Prescient, as one who signs a bond --
Not flaming with gifts and pledges heaped
With rosy hands over his brow.
And then, O night! deliberate! unlovely!
With all of our wooing blotted out by the winning,
In a chosen room in an hour that was known to all!
Next day he sat so listless, almost cold,
So strangely changed, wondering why I wept,
Till a kind of sick despair and voluptuous madness
Seized us to make the pact of death.
A stalk of the earth-sphere,
Frail as star-light;
Waiting to be drawn once again
Into creation's stream.
But next time to be given birth
Gazed at by Raphael and St. Francis
Sometimes as they pass.
For I am their little brother,
To be known clearly face to face
Through a cycle of birth hereafter run.
You may know the seed and the soil;
You may feel the cold rain fall,
But only the earth-sphere, only heaven
Knows the secret of the seed
In the nuptial chamber under the soil.
Throw me into the stream again,
Give me another trial --
Save me, Shelley!
Scheme | ABCDEEFGHIJFKLCMLNOPQEQRSCTUBVWXCYZ1 2 QQ2 3 QVQM |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111011111 110010101111 110111010 10011011001 10111111110 11110110100110 00010001011 11111110110 01010101 01101111 1111111001 010001 1110110111 011110101001 01001011001 11110110010 011110011 100111101 110110101 11011011 011101001 11110101011010 00101011011111 111111011 1101100111 10111010010010 11110111 011011 1111 10111101 0111 11111101 111010110 01111 11111010 11110111 1010110101 11101001 1110111 1100111010 1010101 0010101001 11010101 1101010 1110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,694 |
Words | 320 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 45 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 30 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,354 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 318 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 13, 2023
- 1:36 min read
- 133 Views
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"Caroline Branson" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/8528/caroline-branson>.
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