Analysis of Everything

Anna Akhmatova 1889 (Odessa) – 1966 (Moscow)



Everything’s looted, betrayed and traded,
black death’s wing’s overhead.
Everything’s eaten by hunger, unsated,
so why does a light shine ahead?

By day, a mysterious wood, near the town,
breathes out cherry, a cherry perfume.
By night, on July’s sky, deep, and transparent,
new constellations are thrown.

And something miraculous will come
close to the darkness and ruin,
something no-one, no-one, has known,
though we’ve longed for it since we were children.


Scheme ABAB XXXC XDCD
Poetic Form Quatrain  (67%)
Metre 101001010 111101 10101101 11101101 11001001101 111001001 1111110010 101011 010010011 11010010 10111111 1111111010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 470
Words 74
Sentences 6
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 30
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 120
Words per stanza (avg) 24
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 28, 2023

22 sec read
129

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova was born in 1889 in Odessa on the Black Sea coast. In 1910 she married Nikolai Gumilev, who was also a poet. He was shot as an alleged counter-revolutionary in 1921. Very little of Akhmatova's poetry was published between 1923 and 1941. After Stalin's death her poetry began to be published again. She died in 1966, in a suburb of Moscow. more…

All Anna Akhmatova poems | Anna Akhmatova Books

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