Analysis of The Old Barrel Organ
Innokenty Fedorovich Annensky 1855 (Omsk) – 1909 (St Petersburg)
We almost lost our minds through that mad sky:
It blinds us with its fire or its snow,
And, baring teeth, like any beast of wild,
Old winter hides in April very slow.
No sooner has it fallen into sleep,
That has again its helmet over brows,
And those streams, gone into snow deeps,
Cease their song and freeze in deadly silence.
But all this is forgotten in the past,
The garden hums, and whitens vibrant stone,
And rooms look with opened windows’ eyes,
At dark-green grass, over the road sown.
But only one – the barrel organ old
Shivers with cold in May of sunset’s languor -
Can’t ever grind all injuries recalled,
As it rotates the heedful shaft with anger.
This rusty barrel cannot understand
That all its work is void of any goal,
That any pain of old age extends,
On every pin and every turn, in whole.
But even if it once were to discern
Its own fate and fate of the street organ,
It would not ever cease to sing and turn -
‘Cause every song is one of pain and moan.
Scheme | XAXA XBBX XCXC XDXD XEXE FXFC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (67%) |
Metre | 1111011111 1111110111 0101110111 1101010101 1101110011 1101110101 01110111 1110101010 1111010001 010101101 011110101 111110011 1101010101 101101111 1101110001 111011110 110101001 1111111101 110111101 110010100101 1101110101 1110110110 1111011101 11001111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 971 |
Words | 189 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 126 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 106 Views
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"The Old Barrel Organ" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 24 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/19348/the-old-barrel-organ>.
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