Analysis of Azrael
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
The moon in the field of the keel-plowed main
Was watching the growing tide:
A luminous peasant was driving his wain,
And he offered my soul a ride.
But I nourished a sorrow uncommonly tall,
And I fixed him fast with mine eye.
'O, peasant,' I sang with a dying fall,
'Go leave me to sing and die.'
The water was weltering round my feet,
As prone on the beach they lay.
I chanted my death-song loud and sweet;
'Kioodle, ioodle, iay!'
Then I heard the swish of erecting ears
Which caught that enchanted strain.
The ocean was swollen with storms of tears
That fell from the shining swain.
'O, poet,' leapt he to the soaken sand,
'That ravishing song would make
The devil a saint.' He held out his hand
And solemnly added: 'Shake.'
We shook. 'I crave a victim, you see,'
He said-'you came hither to die.'
The Angel of Death, 't was he! 't was he!
And the victim he crove was I!
'T was I, Fred Emerson Brooks, the bard;
And he knocked me on the head.
O Lord! I thought it exceedingly hard,
For I didn't want to be dead.
'You'll sing no worser for that,' said he,
And he drove with my soul away,
O, death-song singers, be warned by me,
Kioodle, ioodle, iay!
Scheme | abab cdcd efeG xaxa hihi jdjd klkl jfjG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (75%) |
Metre | 0100110111 1100101 01001011011 01101101 11100101001 01111111 1101110101 1111101 01011111 1110111 110111101 111 1110110101 1110101 0101101111 1110101 110111011 1100111 0100111111 0100101 111101011 11111011 01011111111 00101111 1111100101 0111101 1111101001 11101111 11111111 01111101 111101111 111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,128 |
Words | 231 |
Sentences | 19 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 107 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 23, 2023
- 1:07 min read
- 140 Views
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"Azrael" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1724/azrael>.
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