Analysis of Exile
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows
Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance,
Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak
Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew,
Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks
Show sharply in it, as they might in snow.
But it’s soon gone in the sun — what good does it do?
The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees,
Are grey and shrivelled. And the men who live here
Are small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes.
Bring water with you if you come to live here —
Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so deep
That one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas.
Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing,
Mountains of ice. You will have need of these
Profundities and peaks of wet and cold.
Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier,
Birds of a golden colour, who will sing
Of leaves that do not wither, watery fruits
That heavily hang on long melodious boughs
In the blue-silver forests of deep valleys.
I have now been here — how many years? Years unnumbered.
My hands grow clawlike. My eyes are large and starved.
I brought no bird with me, I have no cistern
Where I might find the moon, or river, or snow.
Some day, for lack of these, I’ll spin a web
Between two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang there
Face downward, like a spider, blown as lightly
As ghost of leaf. Crows will caw about me.
Morning and evening I shall drink the dew.
Scheme | XXXAXBACDX DXXECX DEXXC AXXBXXFFA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1111011111 110001111010 0101011101 1101110111 1110110101 1100111101 111100111111 01010110111 1101001111 11010101111 11011111111 11001011111 11111101010 10110111110 1011111111 1011101 11000111011 110101111 11111101001 110011101001 00110101110 11111110111 1111111101 11111111110 11110111011 1111111101 01110111011 11010101110 1111111011 1001011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,395 |
Words | 265 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 6, 5, 9 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 36 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 272 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 66 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:19 min read
- 100 Views
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