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

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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