Analysis of Whispers of Immortality
T. S. Eliot 1888 (St. Louis, Missouri, United States) – 1965 (Kensington)
Webster was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.
Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.
Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense;
To seize and clutch and penetrate,
Expert beyond experience,
He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.
The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;
The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.
And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.
Scheme | XABA XXXC XXXX XXXX XXXX DXXB DEXE CXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (38%) |
Metre | 10110111 01010101 0110101 1101011 1010111 11010101 11111111 100110100 110111010 1111011 1101010 10010100 110101010 0110100 1110011 01010101 1110101 1101100 10101 11010101 010101 01010010 11010011 1101 010101 110101001 0111011 1100101 010001100 101 110110111 11100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,043 |
Words | 170 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 105 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
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"Whispers of Immortality" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/54139/whispers-of-immortality>.
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