Analysis of In Death Valley
Edwin Markham 1852 (Oregon City) – 1940
There came gray stretches of volcanic plains,
Bare, lone and treeless, then a bleak lone hill
Like to the dolorous hill that Dobell saw.
Around were heaps of ruins piled between
The Burn o’ Sorrow and the Water o’ Care;
And from the stillness of the down-crushed walls
One pillar rose up dark against the moon.
There was a nameless Presence everywhere;
In the gray soil there was a purple stain,
And the gray reticent rocks were dyed with blood—
Blood of a vast unknown Calamity.
It was the mark of some ancestral grief—
Grief that began before the ancient Flood.
Scheme | ABCDEFGEHIJKI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111010101 1101010111 11011111 0101110101 01110001011 0101010111 1101110101 110101010 0011110101 00110010111 1101010100 1101110101 1101010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 579 |
Words | 103 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 13 |
Lines Amount | 13 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 448 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 101 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 30 sec read
- 57 Views
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"In Death Valley" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/42898/in-death-valley>.
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