Analysis of The Wind-Struck Music
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Ed Stiles and old Tom Birnam went up to their cattle on the
bare hills
Above Mai Paso; they'd ridden under the stars' white death,
when they reached the ridge the huge tiger-lily
Of a certain cloud-lapped astonishing autumn sunrise opened all
its petals. Ed Stiles pulled in his horse,
That flashy palamino he rode cream-color, heavy white mane,
white tail, his pride and said
'Look, Tom. My God. Ain't that a beautiful sunrise?' Birnam
drew down his mouth, set the hard old chin,
And whined: 'Now, Ed: listen here: I haven't an ounce of
poetry in all my body. It's cows we're after.'
Ed laughed and followed; they began to sort the heifers out of
the herd. One red little deer-legged creature
Rolled her wild eyes and ran away down the hill, the old man
hard after her. She ran through a deep-cut gully,
And Birnam's piebald would have made a clean jump but the clay lip
Crumbled under his take-off, he slipped and
Spilled in the pit,
flailed with four hooves and came out scrambling.
Stiles saw them vanish,
Then the pawing horse and the flapping stirrups. He rode and
looked down and saw the old man in the gulley-bottom
Flat on his back, most grimly gazing up at the sky. He saw the
earth banks, the sparse white grass,
The strong dark sea a thousand feet down below, red with reflections
of clouds. He said 'My God,
Tom, are you hurt?' Who answered slowly, 'No, Ed.
I'm only lying here thinking o' my four sons' biting the words
Carefully between his lips 'big handsome men, at present lolling
in bed in their . . . silk . . . pyjamas . . .
And why the devil I keep on working?' He stood up slowly and
wiped the dirt from his cheek, groaned, spat,
And climbed up the clay bank. Stiles laughed: 'Tom, I can't tell
you: I guess you like to. By God I guess
You like the sunrises.' The old man growled in his throat and said
'Catch me my horse.'
This old man died last winter, having
lived eighty-one years under open sky,
Concerned with cattle, horses and hunting, no thought nor emotion
that all his ancestors since the ice-age
Could not have comprehended. I call that a good life; narrow,
but vastly better than most
Men's lives, and beyond comparison more beautiful; the wind-struck
music man's bones were moulded to be the harp for.
Scheme | ABXCXDXEFXGHGHXCXIXJXIFAXXXEXJBIXXXED JXXXXXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011111111010 11 01110110100111 11101011010 1010110100101101 110111011 1101111101011 111101 111111010011 111110111 0111101110111 1000111011110 110101011101011 01111011010 10110101101011 110011101110 0111110111011 1010111110 1001 1111011100 11110 10101001010110 1101011001010 1111110101101110 110111 0111010110111010 111111 11111101011 1101011011111001 1000111110111010 010111 0101011110111100 10111111 011011111111 1111111111 1101011101101 1111 111111010 1101110101 0111010010111010 111101011 11101011101110 1101011 1100101001100011 10110111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 2,202 |
Words | 410 |
Sentences | 31 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 37, 8 |
Lines Amount | 45 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 860 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 206 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 16, 2023
- 2:04 min read
- 86 Views
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