Analysis of Broken Music
Thomas Bailey Aldrich 1836 (Portsmouth) – 1907 (Boston)
I know not in what fashion she was made,
Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade
On wan or rosy cheek.
I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes,
Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light
As linger in the drift of London skies
Ere twilight turns to night.
I know not; I conjecture. 'Twas a girl
That with her own most gentle desperate hand
From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl--
'Tis hard to understand.
So precious life is! Even to the old
The hours are as a miser's coins, and she--
Within her hands lay youth's unminted gold
And all felicity.
The winged impetuous spirit, the white flame
That was her soul once, whither has it flown?
Above her brow gray lichens blot her name
Upon the carven stone.
This is her Book of Verses--wren-like notes,
Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears;
At times across the chords abruptly floats
A mist of passionate tears.
A fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strung,
A broken music, weirdly incomplete:
Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung,
Lies coiled in dark defeat.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ KXKX LMLM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (86%) |
Metre | 1110110111 1101111111 1101010101 111101 1100110011 111111101 1100011101 11111 1111010101 1101110101 1111010111 11101 1101110101 0101101101 01011111 010100 0101010011 1101110111 0101110101 01011 1101110111 1111101 1101010101 0111001 0101110101 0101010001 1011110011 110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,069 |
Words | 195 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 122 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 59 sec read
- 103 Views
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"Broken Music" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36027/broken-music>.
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