Analysis of Helen

Hilda Doolittle 1886 (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) – 1961 (Zurich)



All Greece hates
the still eyes in the white face,
the lustre as of olives
where she stands,
and the white hands.

All Greece reviles
the wan face when she smiles,
hating it deeper still
when it grows wan and white,
remembering past enchantments
and past ills.

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funereal cypresses.


Scheme AXXBB AXXXAX XXXXCCA
Poetic Form
Metre 111 0110011 0101110 111 0011 111 011111 101101 111101 010011 011 1101 110111 010111 011 110101 101101 110111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 436
Words 80
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 5, 6, 7
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 117
Words per stanza (avg) 26
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 26, 2023

24 sec read
257

Hilda Doolittle

Hilda Doolittle was an American poet, novelist, and memoirist, associated with the early 20th century avant-garde Imagist group of poets, including Ezra Pound and Richard Aldington. She published under the pen name H. D. Hilda was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1886, and grew up just outside Philadelphia in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, and attended Bryn Mawr College. She moved to London in 1911, where she played a central role within the then-emerging Imagist movement. Young and charismatic, she was championed by the modernist poet Ezra Pound, who was instrumental in building her career. From 1916–17, she acted as the literary editor of the Egoist journal, while her poetry appeared in the English Review and the Transatlantic Review.  more…

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