Analysis of The Deer-Star (A Paiute Legend)
Mary Austin 1868 (Carlinville, Illinois) – 1934 ( Santa Fe, New Mexico)
HEAR now a tale of the deer-star,
Tale of the days agone,
When a youth rose up for the hunting
In the bluish light of dawn --
Rose up for the red deer hunting,
And what should a hunter do
Who has never an arrow feathered,
Nor a bow strung taut and true?
The women laughed from the doorways, the maidens mocked at the spring;
For thus to be slack at the hunting is ever a shameful thing.
The old men nodded and muttered, but the youth spoke up with a frown:
'If I have no gear for the hunting, I will run the red deer down.'
He is off by the hills of the morning,
By the dim, untrodden ways;
In the clean, wet, windy marshes
He has startled the deer agraze;
And a buck of the branching antlers
Streams out from the fleeing herd,
And the youth is apt to the running
As the tongue to the spoken word.
They have gone by the broken ridges, by mesa and hill and swale,
Nor once did the red deer falter, nor the feet of the runner fail;
So lightly they trod on the lupines that scarce were the flower-stalks bent,
And over the tops of the dusky sage the wind of their running went.
They have gone by the painted desert,
Where the dawn mists lie uncurled,
And over the purple barrows
On the outer rim of the world.
The people shout from the village,
And the sun gets up to spy
The royal deer and the runner,
Clear shining in the sky.
And ever the hunter watches for the rising of that star
When he comes by the summer mountains where the haunts of the red deer are,
When he comes by the morning meadows where the young of the red deer hide;
He fares him forth to the hunting while the deer and the runner bide.
Scheme | ABCBCDEDCCBB CFXFXECEGGHH XDXXXIXIAAJJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11011011 11011 101111010 0010111 11101110 0110101 111011010 1011101 01011010101101 1111110101100101 0111001010111101 1111110101110111 1111011010 10111 00111010 1110011 001101010 1110101 001111010 10110101 1111010101100101 1110111010110101 1101110111001011 0100110110111101 111101010 101111 01001010 10101101 01011010 0011111 01010010 110001 010010101010111 11110101010110111 1111010110110111 1111101010100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,610 |
Words | 322 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 12, 12, 12 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 414 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 106 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:36 min read
- 78 Views
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"The Deer-Star (A Paiute Legend)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/43288/the-deer-star-%28a-paiute-legend%29>.
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