Analysis of Lot's Wife
Anna Akhmatova 1889 (Odessa) – 1966 (Moscow)
And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back
at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.
Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
Scheme | XAXA XBXBXCXC XDXD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0011111010 10011001101 1010111110 111111111 10110111010 0111110101 10101010011 1101011101 0101010111 1001011101 0101010101 001110101 11111101111 1010011001 10111101010 1101011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 698 |
Words | 130 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 184 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 39 sec read
- 336 Views
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"Lot's Wife" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3008/lot%27s-wife>.
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