Analysis of Shade
Anna Akhmatova 1889 (Odessa) – 1966 (Moscow)
‘What does a certain woman know of the hour of her death?’ - Mandelstam
Tallest, suavest of us, why Memory,
forcing you to appear from the past, pass
down a train, swaying, to find me
clear profiled through the window-glass?
Angel or bird? How we debated!
The poet thought you like translucent straw.
Through dark lashes, your eyes, Georgian,
looking, with gentleness, on it all.
Shade, forgive. Blue skies, Flaubert,
Insomnia, late-blooming lilac flower,
bring you, and the magnificence of the year,
nineteen-thirteen, to mind, and your
unclouded temperate afternoon, memory
difficult for me now – Oh, shade!
Scheme | A BCACXXXXXXXXBX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1101010110101011 101111100 1011011011 10110111 1110101 101111010 0101110101 11101110 101100111 1011110 0100110110 11001101 11111101 11001100 10011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 609 |
Words | 101 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 14 |
Lines Amount | 15 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 238 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 30 sec read
- 126 Views
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"Shade" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3022/shade>.
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