Analysis of The Last Quarter Of The Moon
Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)
How long shall I tarnish the mirror of life,
A spatter of rust on its polished steel!
The seasons reel
Like a goaded wheel.
Half-numb, half-maddened, my days are strife.
The night is sliding towards the dawn,
And upturned hills crouch at autumn's knees.
A torn moon flees
Through the hemlock trees,
The hours have gnawed it to feed their spawn.
Pursuing and jeering the misshapen thing
A rabble of clouds flares out of the east.
Like dogs unleashed
After a beast,
They stream on the sky, an outflung string.
A desolate wind, through the unpeopled dark,
Shakes the bushes and whistles through empty nests,
And the fierce unrests
I keep as guests
Crowd my brain with corpses, pallid and stark.
Leave me in peace, O Spectres, who haunt
My labouring mind, I have fought and failed.
I have not quailed,
I was all unmailed
And naked I strove, 'tis my only vaunt.
The moon drops into the silver day
As waking out of her swoon she comes.
I hear the drums
Of millenniums
Beating the mornings I still must stay.
The years I must watch go in and out,
While I build with water, and dig in air,
And the trumpets blare
Hollow despair,
The shuddering trumpets of utter rout.
An atom tossed in a chaos made
Of yeasting worlds, which bubble and foam.
Whence have I come?
What would be home?
I hear no answer. I am afraid!
I crave to be lost like a wind-blown flame.
Pushed into nothingness by a breath,
And quench in a wreath
Of engulfing death
This fight for a God, or this devil's game.
Scheme | ABBBA XCCCX DEXED FGCGF XXEEE HIIIH JKKKJ LMXML NOXON |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (51%) |
Metre | 11111001011 0101111101 0101 10101 11111111 011100101 01111101 0111 1011 0101111111 01001000101 0101111101 1101 1001 11101111 010011011 10100101101 0011 1111 1111101001 11011111 11111101 1111 1111 0101111101 011010101 110110111 1101 10100 100101111 011111001 1111100101 00101 1001 0100101101 110100101 11111001 1111 1111 111101101 1111110111 101100101 01001 10101 1110111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,435 |
Words | 274 |
Sentences | 21 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 128 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:22 min read
- 174 Views
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"The Last Quarter Of The Moon" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2325/the-last-quarter-of-the-moon>.
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