Analysis of A Postcard From The Volcano
Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)
Children picking up our bones
Will never know that these were once
As quick as foxes on the hill;
And that in autumn, when the grapes
Made sharp air sharper by their smell
These had a being, breathing frost;
And least will guess that with our bones
We left much more, left what still is
The look of things, left what we felt
At what we saw. The spring clouds blow
Above the shuttered mansion house,
Beyond our gate and the windy sky
Cries out a literate despair.
We knew for long the mansion's look
And what we said of it became
A part of what it is ... Children,
Still weaving budded aureoles,
Will speak our speech and never know,
Will say of the mansion that it seems
As if he that lived there left behind
A spirit storming in blank walls,
A dirty house in a gutted world,
A tatter of shadows peaked to white,
Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.
Scheme | AXX XXX AXX BXX XXX CAB XXX XXC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10101101 11011101 11110101 01010101 11110111 11010101 011111101 11111111 01111111 11110111 01010101 0110100101 11010001 1111011 01111101 01111110 11011 111010101 111010111 111111101 01010011 010100101 01011111 1101101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 862 |
Words | 166 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 84 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 50 sec read
- 172 Views
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"A Postcard From The Volcano" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/37879/a-postcard-from-the-volcano>.
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