Analysis of The Rock In The Sea
Archibald MacLeish 1892 (Glencoe) – 1982 (Boston)
Think of our blindness where the water burned!
Are we so certain that those wings, returned
And turning, we had half discerned
Before our dazzled eyes had surely seen
The bird aloft there, did not mean?—
Our hearts so seized upon the sign!
Think how we sailed up-wind, the brine
Tasting of daphne, the enormous wave
Thundering in the water cave—
Thunder in stone. And how we beached the skiff
And climbed the coral of that iron cliff
And found what only in our hearts we’d heard—
The silver screaming of that one, white bird:
The fabulous wings, the crimson beak
That opened, red as blood, to shriek
And clamor in that world of stone,
No voice to answer but its own.
What certainty, hidden in our hearts before,
Found in the bird its metaphor?
Scheme | AAABBC CDDEEFFGGHH II |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101010101 1111011101 01011101 01101011101 01011111 101110101 11111101 1011000101 10000101 1001011101 0101011101 01110010111 0101011111 010010101 11011111 01001111 11110111 110010010101 10011100 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 759 |
Words | 138 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 11, 2 |
Lines Amount | 19 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 195 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 45 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 20, 2023
- 41 sec read
- 130 Views
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