Sanary

Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)



Her little hot room looked over the bay
Through a stiff palisade of glinting palms,
And there she would lie in the heat of the day,
Her dark head resting upon her arms,
So quiet, so still, she did not seem
To think, to feel, or even to dream.

The shimmering, blinding web of sea
Hung from the sky, and the spider sun
With busy frightening cruelty
Crawled over the sky and spun and spun.
She could see it still when she shut her eyes,
And the little boats caught in the web like flies.

Down below at this idle hour
Nobody walked in the dust street;
A scent of a dying mimosa flower
Lay on the air, but sweet--too sweet.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

36 sec read
47

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXAXBB CDCDEE FGFG
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 611
Words 123
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 6, 4

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. more…

All Katherine Mansfield poems | Katherine Mansfield Books

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