Poetry

Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)



Yes, I shall swear by you, my verse,
I shall wheeze out, before I swoon:
You're not a tenor's shape and voice,
You're summer travelling third class,
You are a suburb, not a tune.

You're a street as close as May,
You're a battlefield at night,
Where clouds groan loudly in dismay
And scatter, when dismissed, in fright.

And, splitting in the railway's lace-
That's outskirts, not refrain and home-
They crawl back to their native place
Without a song, as if struck dumb.

The shower's offshoots stick in clusters
Till break of day, and all the time
They scribble on the roofs acrostics
And bubble up rhyme after rhyme.

All poetry is what you make it.
And even when the truism's not worth
The rhyme, the flow of verse is scared.
The notebook's open-so flow forth!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 07, 2023

44 sec read
139

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABXXB CDCD EXEX XFAF XXXX
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 748
Words 139
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 4, 4, 4

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. more…

All Boris Pasternak poems | Boris Pasternak Books

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    Quiz

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    "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies."
    A Percy Bysshe Shelley
    B William Wordsworth
    C Lord Byron
    D John Keats