Analysis of Domination Of Black

Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)



At night, by the fire,
The colors of the bushes
And of the fallen leaves,
Repeating themselves,
Turned in the room,
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
Yes: but the color of the heavy hemlocks
Came striding.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.

The colors of their tails
Were like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
In the twilight wind.
They swept over the room,
Just as they flew from the boughs of the hemlocks
Down to the ground.
I heard them cry -- the peacocks.
Was it a cry against the twilight
Or against the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind,
Turning as the flames
Turned in the fire,
Turning as the tails of the peacocks
Turned in the loud fire,
Loud as the hemlocks
Full of the cry of the peacocks?
Or was it a cry against the hemlocks?

Out of the window,
I saw how the planets gathered
Like the leaves themselves
Turning in the wind.
I saw how the night came,
Came striding like the color of the heavy hemlocks
I felt afraid.
And I remembered the cry of the peacocks.


Scheme abxcdCEbxF xcEedbxfxcExafabfb xxCExbxF
Poetic Form
Metre 111010 0101010 010101 01001 1001 10101 10001 1101010101 110 0101001101 010111 010101 10001 0011 111001 1111101101 1101 111101 11010101 1010101 10001 10101 10010 10101101 100110 1101 1101101 111010101 11010 11101010 10101 10001 111011 110101010101 1101 0101001101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 981
Words 192
Sentences 12
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 10, 18, 8
Lines Amount 36
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 264
Words per stanza (avg) 63
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 26, 2023

57 sec read
151

Wallace Stevens

Wallace Stevens was an American Modernist poet. more…

All Wallace Stevens poems | Wallace Stevens Books

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