Analysis of An Old Man
Constantine P. Cavafy 1863 (Alexandria) – 1933 (Alexandria)
At the noisy end of the cafe, head bent
over the table, an old man sits alone,
a newspaper in front of him.
And in the miserable banality of old age
he thinks how little he enjoyed the years
when he had strength, eloquence, and looks.
He knows he's aged a lot: he sees it, feels it.
Yet it seems he was young just yesterday.
So brief an interval, so brief.
And he thinks of Prudence, how it fooled him,
how he always believed - what madness -
that cheat who said: "Tomorrow. You have plenty of time."
He remembers impulses bridled, the joy
he sacrificed. Every chance he lost
now mocks his senseless caution.
But so much thinking, so much remembering
makes the old man dizzy. He falls asleep,
his head resting on the cafe table.
Scheme | XXA XXX XXX AXX XXX XXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10101100111 10010111101 0100111 00010000100111 1111010101 111110001 11110111111 111111110 11110011 0111101111 11101110 111101111011 10101001001 110100111 1111010 11110110100 1011101101 1110100110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 719 |
Words | 140 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 94 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 64 Views
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"An Old Man" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7109/an-old-man>.
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