Analysis of Portraits
Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941
Your love was like moonlight turning harsh things to beauty, so that little wry souls reflecting each other obliquely as in cracked mirrors… beheld in your luminous spirit their own reflection, transfigured as in a shining stream, and loved you for what they are not.
You are less an image in my mind than a luster I see you in gleams pale as star-light on a gray wall… evanescent as the reflection of a white swan shimmering in broken water.
(To E. S.)
You inevitable,
Unwieldy with enormous births,
Lying on your back, eyes open, sucking down stars,
Or you kissing and picking over fresh deaths…
Filth… worms… flowers…
Green and succulent pods…
Tremulous gestation
Of dark water germinal with lilies…
All in you from the beginning…
Nothing buried or thrown away…
Only the moon like a white sheet
Spread over the dead you carry.
Speeding gull
Passing under a cloud
Caught on his white back
You… drop of crystal rain.
Now you gleam softly triumphant
Folding immensities of light.
(To O. F. T.)
You have always gotten up after blows
And smiled… and shaken off the dust…
Only you could not shake the darkness
From off the bruised brown of your eyes.
(To E. A. R.)
Centuries shall not deflect nor many suns absorb your stream, flowing immune and cold between the banks of snow. Nor any wind carry the dust of cities to your high waters that arise out of the peaks and return again into the mountain and never descend.
Scheme | X X X AXXXXXXXXXXB AXXXXX B XXXX X X |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111011110111011010110010101101011001011010110010101111111 1111100111010111011111101101010010101110001010 111 101000 01010101 101111101011 11100101011 1110 101001 100010 11101110 10110010 10101101 10011011 11001110 101 101001 11111 111101 11110010 10111 1111 111101101 01010101 101111010 11011111 1101 10011011101011110010101011111011001110111101011101001010101001001 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,488 |
Words | 268 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 1, 1, 12, 6, 1, 4, 1, 1 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 40 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 124 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 02, 2023
- 1:20 min read
- 51 Views
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"Portraits" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25916/portraits>.
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