Analysis of Night-Scented Stock
Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)
White, white in the milky night
The moon danced over a tree.
"Wouldn't it be lovely to swim in the lake!"
Someone whispered to me.
"Oh, do-do-do!" cooed someone else,
And clasped her hands to her chin.
"I should so love to see the white bodies--
All the white bodies jump in!"
The big dark house hid secretly
Behind the magnolia and the spreading pear-tree;
But there was a sound of music--music rippled and ran
Like a lady laughing behind her fan,
Laughing and mocking and running away...
"Come into the garden--it's as light as day!"
"I can't dance to that Hungarian stuff,
The rhythm in it is not passionate enough,"
Said somebody. "I absolutely refuse...."
But he took off his socks and his shoes
And round he spun. "It's like Hungarian fruit dishes
Hard and bright--a mechanical blue!"
His white feet flicked in the grass like fishes...
Someone cried: "I want to dance, too!"
But one with a queer Russian ballet head
Curled up on a blue wooden bench instead.
And another, shadowy--shadowy and tall--
Walked in the shadow of the dark house wall,
Someone beside her. It shone in the gloom,
His round grey hat, like a wet mushroom.
"Don't you think perhaps..." piped someone's flute.
"How sweet the flowers smell!" I heard the other say.
Somebody picked a wet, wet pink,
Smelled it and threw it away.
"Is the moon a virgin or is she a harlot?"
Asked somebody. Nobody would tell.
The faces and the hands moved in a pattern
As the music rose and fell,
In a dancing, mysterious, moon-bright pattern
Like flowers nodding under the sea...
The music stopped and there was nothing left of them
But the moon dancing over the tree.
Scheme | XAXA XBXB AACCDD EEFFGHGH IIJJKK XDXDXLMLMA XA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (20%) |
Metre | 1100101 0111001 10111011001 11011 1111111 0101101 1111110110 1011010 01111100 010010001011 11101110101001 1010100101 1001001001 10101011111 1111101001 010011110001 110101001 111111011 0111110100110 101001001 1111001110 1111111 1110110011 1110110101 001010010001 100110111 101011001 111110110 11101111 110101110101 1010111 1101101 101010111010 110111 01000110010 1010101 001001001110 110101001 010101110111 101101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,593 |
Words | 302 |
Sentences | 28 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 6, 8, 6, 10, 2 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 177 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 41 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:29 min read
- 97 Views
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"Night-Scented Stock" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25122/night-scented-stock>.
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