Analysis of THE DARKENING
Phil Roberts 1957 (Melbourne)
The darkening approacheth
To fill the land with terror,
A living, breathing, consuming form
A giant biological error.
The darkening will strip the land
Of everything that’s breathing,
Reducing the oasis to a wasteland
Before finally leaving.
Leaving a barren desert
With very little living there,
Then on the breeze, it vanishes
As light as living air.
But the air that hunts the living
To feast upon its blood,
Leaving none behind to tell
Of monstrous things, it’s done.
A giant soaring bat-winged form
Transparent, or so they say,
Reflected ‘gainst the moon at night
But invisible in the day.
It soars where the breeze takes it
Hunting and killing all it finds,
Until a barren lifeless place
Is all that’s left behind.
It reaches a thriving oasis
A paradise by the sand,
Yet when the darkening departs
No living creature stands.
It strips the land of plant life
It devours wildlife ‘cross the land,
Cattle, plants, and animals
Before it starts on Man.
The darkening leaves nought behind
No single living creature,
It strips the land of all its life
Leaving a barren, lifeless feature.
So when the darkening descends
It’s best to leave this place,
Just grab your kids and animals
And set off on a race.
A race to beat the darkening
Before its death descends,
A race against a hungry foe
Before your life doth end.
The darkening soars on the wind
Hunting far and wide,
Bones and brittle stalks are left
The signs of those who died.
The skull bone of some cattle
Perhaps the femur of a man,
To show that death upon the wind
Has stalked this wasted land.
THE END
© Copyright 2021 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Scheme | XABA CDCD XEXE DXXX BFXF XXGH XCXX ICJK HAIA LGJG DLXM HNXN XKHC MXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01001 1101110 010100101 010010010 01001101 110110 0100010101 0110010 1001010 11010101 11011100 111101 10111010 110111 1010111 110111 01010111 0101111 01010111 10100001 1110111 10010111 01010101 111101 110010010 010101 11010001 110101 1101111 10101101 1010100 011111 01001101 1101010 11011111 100101010 11010001 111111 11110100 011101 01110100 011101 01010101 011111 01001101 10101 1010111 011111 0111110 01010101 11110101 111101 01 101010 100100010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,582 |
Words | 286 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 14 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 55 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 92 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 20 |
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"THE DARKENING" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/101271/the-darkening>.
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