Analysis of The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones

Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)



Two lovers, here at the corner, by the steeple,
Two lovers blow together like music blowing:
And the crowd dissolves about them like a sea.
Recurring waves of sound break vaguely about them,
They drift from wall to wall, from tree to tree.
'Well, am I late?'  Upward they look and laugh,
They look at the great clock's golden hands,
They laugh and talk, not knowing what they say:
Only, their words like music seem to play;
And seeming to walk, they tread strange sarabands.

'I brought you this . . . ' the soft words float like stars
Down the smooth heaven of her memory.
She stands again by a garden wall,
The peach tree is in bloom, pink blossoms fall,
Water sings from an opened tap, the bees
Glisten and murmur among the trees.
Someone calls from the house.  She does not answer.
Backward she leans her head,
And dreamily smiles at the peach-tree leaves, wherethrough
She sees an infinite May sky spread
A vault profoundly blue.
The voice from the house fades far away,
The glistening leaves more vaguely ripple and sway . .
The tap is closed, the water ceases to hiss . . .
Silence . . . blue sky . . . and then, 'I brought you this . . . '
She turns again, and smiles . . . He does not know
She smiles from long ago . . .

She turns to him and smiles . . . Sunlight above him
Roars like a vast invisible sea,
Gold is beaten before him, shrill bells of silver;
He is released of weight, his body is free,
He lifts his arms to swim,
Dark years like sinister tides coil under him . . .
The lazy sea-waves crumble along the beach
With a whirring sound like wind in bells,
He lies outstretched on the yellow wind-worn sands
Reaching his lazy hands
Among the golden grains and sea-white shells . . .

'One white rose . . . or is it pink, to-day?'
They pause and smile, not caring what they say,
If only they may talk.
The crowd flows past them like dividing waters.
Dreaming they stand, dreaming they walk.

'Pink,—to-day!'—Face turns to dream-bright face,
Green leaves rise round them, sunshine settles upon them,
Water, in drops of silver, falls from the rose.
She smiles at a face that smiles through leaves from the mirror.
She breathes the fragrance; her dark eyes close . . .

Time is dissolved, it blows like a little dust:
Time, like a flurry of rain,
Patters and passes, starring the window-pane.
Once, long ago, one night,
She saw the lightning, with long blue quiver of light,
Ripping the darkness . . . and as she turned in terror
A soft face leaned above her, leaned softly down,
Softly around her a breath of roses was blown,
She sank in waves of quiet, she seemed to float
In a sea of silence . . . and soft steps grew remote . .

'Well, let us walk in the park . . . The sun is warm,
We'll sit on a bench and talk . . .'  They turn and glide,
The crowd of faces wavers and breaks and flows.
'Look how the oak-tops turn to gold in the sunlight!
Look how the tower is changed and glows!'

Two lovers move in the crowd like a link of music,
We press upon them, we hold them, and let them pass;
A chord of music strikes us and straight we tremble;
We tremble like wind-blown grass.

What was this dream we had, a dream of music,
Music that rose from the opening earth like magic
And shook its beauty upon us and died away?
The long cold streets extend once more before us.
The red sun drops, the walls grow grey.


Scheme AXBCBXDEEB XBFFGGHIHIXEEJJKK LBHBLLXMDDM EENXN XCOHX XPPQQHXXRR XXOQO STAT SSEXE
Poetic Form
Metre 110110101010 110101011010 00101011101 010111110011 1111111111 1111101101 111011101 1101110111 1011110111 010111111 1111011111 1011010100 110110101 0111011101 1011110101 100100101 1110111110 101101 011101111 111100111 010101 011011101 010011101001 01110101011 1011011111 1101011111 111101 1111011011 110101001 111001111110 11011111011 111111 11110011101 01011100101 101011101 11011010111 101101 0101010111 111111111 1101110111 110111 01111101010 10111011 111111111 11111110011 10011101101 1110111111010 110100111 11011110101 1101011 1010100101 110111 110101111011 100100111010 01110101101 100100111011 11011101111 001110011101 11110010111 11101011101 0111010101 11011111001 110101101 1101001101110 110111110111 011101101110 1101111 11111101110 1011101001110 011100110101 01110111011 01110111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 3,259
Words 597
Sentences 77
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 10, 17, 11, 5, 5, 10, 5, 4, 5
Lines Amount 72
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 278
Words per stanza (avg) 72
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

2:58 min read
28

Conrad Potter Aiken

Conrad Potter Aiken was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author born in Savannah Georgia whose work includes poetry short stories novels and an autobiography more…

All Conrad Potter Aiken poems | Conrad Potter Aiken Books

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    "The House Of Dust: Part 02: 07: Two Lovers: Overtones" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7061/the-house-of-dust%3A-part-02%3A-07%3A-two-lovers%3A-overtones>.

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