Analysis of Before March
Archibald MacLeish 1892 (Glencoe) – 1982 (Boston)
THE gull's image and the gull
Meet upon the water
All day I have thought of her
There is nothing left of that year
(There is sere-grass
Salt colored)
We have annulled it with
Salt
We have galled it clean to the clay with that one autumn
The hedge-rows keep the rubbish and the leaves
There is nothing left of that year in our lives but the leaves of it
As though it had not been at all
As though the love the love and the life altered
Even ourselves are as strangers in these thoughts
Why should I weep for this?
What have I brought her?
Of sorrow of sorrow of sorrow her heart full
The gull
Meets with his image on the winter water.
Scheme | ABBCDEFGHIJKELMBNAB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0110001 101010 1111110 11101111 1111 110 111011 1 1111110111110 0111010001 11101111010110111 11111111 11010100110 100011110011 111111 11110 110110110011 01 11110101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 623 |
Words | 128 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 19 |
Lines Amount | 19 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 500 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 126 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 38 sec read
- 139 Views
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"Before March" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3749/before-march>.
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