Analysis of The Carver
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
See, as the carver carves a rose,
A wing, a toad, a serpent's eye,
In cruel granite, to disclose
The soft things that in hardness lie,
So this one, taking up his heart,
Which time and change had made a stone,
Carved out of it with dolorous art,
Laboring yearlong and alone,
The thing there hidden—rose, toad, wing?
A frog's hand on a lily pad?
Bees in a cobweb?—no such thing!
A girl's head was the thing he had,
Small, shapely, richly crowned with hair,
Drowsy, with eyes half closed, as they
Looked through you and beyond you, clear
To something farther than Cathay:
Saw you, yet counted you not worth
The seeing, thinking all the while
How, flower-like, beauty comes to birth;
And thinking this, began to smile.
Medusa! For she could not see
The world she turned to stone and ash.
Only herself she saw, a tree
That flowered beneath a lightning-flash.
Thus dreamed her face—a lovely thing
To worship, weep for, or to break . . .
Better to carve a claw, a wing,
Or, if the heart provide, a snake.
Scheme | ABABCDCDEFEFGHIHJKJKLMLMENEN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010101 01010101 01010101 01110101 11110111 11011101 1111111 10011001 01110111 01110101 1001111 01110111 11010111 10111111 11100111 11010101 11110111 01010101 110110111 01010111 01011111 01111101 10011101 110010101 11010101 11011111 10110101 11010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,011 |
Words | 184 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 28 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 759 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 184 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 108 Views
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