Analysis of Joseph Dixon
Edgar Lee Masters 1868 (Garnett) – 1950 (Elkins Park)
Who carved this shattered harp on my stone?
I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos
Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you,
Making them sweet again -- with tuning fork or without?
Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say,
But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings
To a magic of numbers flying before your thought
Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder?
Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses
Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound?
I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches
The waves of mingled music and light from afar,
The antennae of Thought that listens through utmost space.
Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof
Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over
And use me again if I am worthy to use.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNHO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111101111 111111111010010 1010100111 1011011101101 11011110110111 110111001101 1010110100111 1011100111010 11111011011110 11010110111 1111110101110 011101001101 001011110111 10011111011 1111111011110 011011111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 816 |
Words | 165 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 16 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 40 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 644 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 163 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 49 sec read
- 105 Views
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