Analysis of The Summit Redwood
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Only stand high a long enough time your lightning
will come; that is what blunts the peaks of
redwoods;
But this old tower of life on the hilltop has taken
it more than twice a century, this knows in
every
Cell the salty and the burning taste, the shudder
and the voice.
The fire from heaven; it has
felt the earth's too
Roaring up hill in autumn, thorned oak-leaves tossing
their bright ruin to the bitter laurel-leaves,
and all
Its under-forest has died and died, and lives to be
burnt; the redwood has lived. Though the fire
entered,
It cored the trunk while the sapwood increased. The
trunk is a tower, the bole of the trunk is a
black cavern,
The mast of the trunk with its green boughs the
mountain stars are strained through
Is like the helmet-spike on the highest head of an
army; black on lit blue or hidden in cloud
It is like the hill's finger in heaven. And when the
cloud hides it, though in barren summer, the
boughs
Make their own rain.
Old Escobar had a cunning trick
when he stole beef. He and his grandsons
Would drive the cow up here to a starlight death and
hoist the carcass into the tree's hollow,
Then let them search his cabin he could smile for
pleasure, to think of his meat hanging secure
Exalted over the earth and the ocean, a theft like a
star, secret against the supreme sky.
Submitted by Holt
Scheme | AXXXXBCX XDAXXBCXEEXEDXXEEXX XXXXXXEX X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101101011110 111111011 1 1111011101110 11110100110 100 101000101010 001 01011011 1011 101101011110 11101010101 01 1101011010111 101111010 10 1101101010 110100110110 110 0110111110 101111 1101011010111 10111111001 1110110010010 1111010100 1 1111 11010101 11111011 11011110110 1010010110 11111101111 10111111001 010100100100110 110010011 01011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,440 |
Words | 250 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 19, 8, 1 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 261 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 62 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:15 min read
- 126 Views
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