Analysis of Pasa Thalassa Thalassa
Edwin Arlington Robinson 1869 – 1935
“The sea is everywhere the sea.”
Gone—faded out of the story, the sea-faring friend I remember?
Gone for a decade, they say: never a word or a sign.
Gone with his hard red face that only his laughter could wrinkle,
Down where men go to be still, by the old way of the sea.
Never again will he come, with rings in his ears like a pirate,
Back to be living and seen, here with his roses and vines;
Here where the tenants are shadows and echoes of years uneventful,
Memory meets the event, told from afar by the sea.
Smoke that floated and rolled in the twilight away from the chimney
Floats and rolls no more. Wheeling and falling, instead,
Down with a twittering flash go the smooth and inscrutable swallows,
Down to the place made theirs by the cold work of the sea.
Roses have had their day, and the dusk is on yarrow and wormwood—
Dusk that is over the grass, drenched with memorial dew;
Trellises lie like bones in a ruin that once was a garden,
Swallows have lingered and ceased, shadows and echoes are all.
Where is he lying to-night, as I turn away down to the valley,
Down where the lamps of men tell me the streets are alive?
Where shall I ask, and of whom, in the town or on land or on water,
News of a time and a place buried alike and with him?
Few now remain who may care, nor may they be wiser for caring,
Where or what manner the doom, whether by day or by night;
Whether in Indian deeps or on flood-laden fields of Atlantis,
Or by the roaring Horn, shrouded in silence he lies.
Few now remain who return by the weed-weary path to his cottage,
Drawn by the scene as it was—met by the chill and the change;
Few are alive who report, and few are alive who remember,
More of him now than a name carved somewhere on the sea.
“Where is he lying?” I ask, and the lights in the valley are nearer;
Down to the streets I go, down to the murmur of men.
Down to the roar of the sea in a ship may be well for another—
Down where he lies to-night, silent, and under the storms.
Scheme | A BXCA XXCA AXXA XXXX AXBX XXXX XXBA BXBX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111001 11011010011011010 11001111001101 111111110110110 11111111011101 1001111110111010 11110011111001 110101101011010 10010011101101 111001001011010 101111001001 110111010010010 1101111011101 101111001111001 11110011101001 11110010111010 1011001101011 11110111110111010 1101111101101 11110110011111110 11010011001011 1101111111110110 11110011011111 10010011111011010 1101011001011 11011011011011110 11011111101001 1101101011011010 111110111101 11110110010010110 1101111101011 11011010011111010 1111111001001 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 2,000 |
Words | 393 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 33 |
Letters per line (avg) | 46 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 169 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:58 min read
- 61 Views
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"Pasa Thalassa Thalassa" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/10016/pasa-thalassa-thalassa>.
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