Analysis of The End of the World
Archibald MacLeish 1892 (Glencoe) – 1982 (Boston)
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb
Quite unexpectedly to top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing -- nothing at all.
Scheme | ABABCXCX DEDEXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1010011 011110 0101110101 01010101010 011101101 1001010111 011101101 101001111 01110111110 1101110111 1001101010 1111010101 1001010011 11010101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 598 |
Words | 104 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 242 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 51 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 14, 2023
- 31 sec read
- 239 Views
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"The End of the World" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3763/the-end-of-the-world>.
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