Analysis of The Treasure
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Mountains, a moment's earth-waves rising and hollowing; the
earth too's an ephemerid; the stars-
Short-lived as grass the stars quicken in the nebula and dry in their
summer, they spiral
Blind up space, scattered black seeds of a future; nothing lives
long, the whole sky's
Recurrences tick the seconds of the hours of the ages of the gulf
before birth, and the gulf
After death is like dated: to labor eighty years in a notch of
eternity is nothing too tiresome,
Enormous repose after, enormous repose before, the flash of
activity.
Surely you never have dreamed the incredible depths were prologue
and epilogue merely
To the surface play in the sun, the instant of life, what is called
life? I fancy
That silence is the thing, this noise a found word for it; interjection,
a jump of the breath at that silence;
Stars burn, grass grows, men breathe: as a man finding treasure
says 'Ah!' but the treasure's the essence;
Before the man spoke it was there, and after he has spoken he
gathers it, inexhaustible treasure.
Scheme | ABCDEFGGHIHJKJLJMNONJO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10010111001000 111101 11110110001000101 10110 11110111010101 1011 1101010101010101 011001 10111101101010011 01001101100 01001100100101011 0100 1011011001001010 01010 1010100101011111 1110 1101011101111010 011011110 1111111011010 11101010 0101111101011101 1010010010 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,004 |
Words | 180 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 22 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 804 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 177 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 54 sec read
- 219 Views
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