Analysis of Still The Mind Smiles
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Still the mind smiles at its own rebellions,
Knowing all the while that civilization and the other evils
That make humanity ridiculous, remain
Beautiful in the whole fabric, excesses that balance each other
Like the paired wings of a flying bird.
Misery and riches, civilization and squalid savagery,
Mass war and the odor of unmanly peace:
Tragic flourishes above and below the normal of life.
In order to value this fretful time
It is necessary to remember our norm, the unaltered passions,
The same-colored wings of imagination,
That the crowd clips, in lonely places new-grown; the unchanged
Lives of herdsmen and mountain farms,
Where men are few, and few tools, a few weapons, and their
dawns are beautiful.
From here for normal one sees both ways,
And listens to the splendor of God, the exact poet, the sonorous
Antistrophe of desolation to the strophe multitude.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIAJKLMNOPQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011111010 1010110010001010 110100010001 1000011010110110 101110101 1000100010010100 110010111 101000100101011 0101101101 111001010101001010 0110110010 10110101011001 11100101 1111011011001 11100 111101111 010101011001100100 1101010110 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 862 |
Words | 147 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 18 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 39 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 703 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 145 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 76 Views
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