Analysis of Hugo's "pool in the forest"
Eugene Field 1850 (St. Louis) – 1895 (Chicago)
How calm, how beauteous and how cool--
How like a sister to the skies,
Appears the broad, transparent pool
That in this quiet forest lies.
The sunshine ripples on its face,
And from the world around, above,
It hath caught down the nameless grace
Of such reflections as we love.
But deep below its surface crawl
The reptile horrors of the night--
The dragons, lizards, serpents--all
The hideous brood that hate the light;
Through poison fern and slimy weed
And under ragged, jagged stones
They scuttle, or, in ghoulish greed,
They lap a dead man's bleaching bones.
And as, O pool, thou dost cajole
With seemings that beguile us well,
So doeth many a human soul
That teemeth with the lusts of hell.
Scheme | ABABCDCD EFEFGHGH IJIJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Traditional rhyme |
Metre | 1111011 11010101 01010101 10110101 0110111 01010101 11110101 11010111 11011101 01010101 01010101 010011101 11010101 0101011 11010101 11011101 01111101 1110111 11100101 1110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 695 |
Words | 125 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 182 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 41 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 37 sec read
- 69 Views
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"Hugo's "pool in the forest"" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/12973/hugo%27s-%22pool-in-the-forest%22>.
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