Analysis of Shakespeare’s Grave
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Doggerel,' he thought, 'will do for church-wardens,
Poetry's precious enough not to be wasted,'
And rhymed it all out with a skew smile:
'Spare these stones. Curst be he that moves my bones-
Will hold the hands of masons and grave-diggers.'
But why did the good man care? For he wanted quietness.
He had tasted enough life in his time
To stuff a thousand; he wanted not to swim wide
In waters, nor wander the enormous air,
Nor grow into grass, enter through the mouths of cattle
The bodies of lusty women and warriors,
But all be finished. He knew it feelingly; the game
Of the whirling circles had become tiresome.
'Annihilation's impossible, but insulated
In the church under the rhyming flagstone
Perhaps my passionate ruins may be kept off market
To the end of this age. Oh, a thousand years
Will hardly leach,' he thought, 'this dust of that fire.'
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJEKLBMNOP |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10011111110 1100111110 011111011 1111111111 11011100110 11101111110100 1110011011 110101101111 01011000101 1101110101110 010110100100 11110111101 101010101100 101001100 001100101 01110010111110 10111110101 110111111110 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 844 |
Words | 158 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 18 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 666 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 151 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 14, 2023
- 46 sec read
- 109 Views
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"Shakespeare’s Grave" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/32845/shakespeare%E2%80%99s-grave>.
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