Analysis of What Do the Daisies Say on Graveyard Hills?
If only the wind would hush
and we could somehow press
our heads against the sod and hear
the language of flowers.
What do the daisies say
on lonely graveyard hills?
They stand in sentry rows
as though to guard the sleeping.
I cannot believe they are silent.
Their yellow petals wave;
they bend on green stems
like supplicants in need of grace.
What do they say in petal talk,
in velvet-smooth vowels,
in the alliterative rush of consonants
that rise and fall and rise again?
If only they could speak to us,
say sweetly how proud to stand
like guardians of the dead
or how they miss summer gardens.
If only this heart of mine,
this true self who speaks wordlessly,
could decipher the tongues of daisies
and I could suddenly grow wise.
(C) 2011 Salvatore Buttaci
Scheme | XAXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX A |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (24%) |
Metre | 1100111 01111 101010101 010110 110101 11011 110101 1111010 110011110 110101 11111 110111 11110101 010110 000100011100 11010101 11011111 1101111 1100101 11111010 1101111 111111 101001110 01110011 100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 738 |
Words | 139 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 1 |
Lines Amount | 25 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 87 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 20 |
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 41 sec read
- 5 Views
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"What Do the Daisies Say on Graveyard Hills?" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 7 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/90615/what-do-the-daisies-say-on-graveyard-hills%3F>.
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