Analysis of Silhouette
Emily Pauline Johnson 1861 – 1913
The sky-line melts from russet into blue,
Unbroken the horizon, saving where
A wreath of smoke curls up the far, thin air,
And points the distant lodges of the Sioux.
Etched where the lands and cloudlands touch and die
A solitary Indian tepee stands,
The only habitation of these lands,
That roll their magnitude from sky to sky.
The tent poles lift and loom in thin relief,
The upward floating smoke ascends between,
And near the open doorway, gaunt and lean,
And shadow-like, there stands an Indian Chief.
With eyes that lost their lustre long ago,
With visage fixed and stern as fate's decree,
He looks towards the empty west, to see
The never-coming herd of buffalo.
Only the bones that bleach upon the plains,
Only the fleshless skeletons that lie
In ghastly nakedness and silence, cry
Out mutely that naught else to him remains
Scheme | ABBA CDDC EFFE GHHG ICCI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 0111110011 0100010101 0111110111 0101010101 110101101 010010011 010010111 111101111 0111010101 0101010101 010101101 0111111001 1111110101 1101011101 1101010111 010101110 1001110101 100110011 01010101 111111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 841 |
Words | 147 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 133 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 29 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 20, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 446 Views
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"Silhouette" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/12608/silhouette>.
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