Analysis of Death Sonnet I

Gabriela Mistral 1889 (Vicuña) – 1957 (Hempstead)



From the icy niche where men placed you
I lower your body to the sunny, poor earth.
They didn't know I too must sleep in it
and dream on the same pillow.

I place you in the sunny ground, with a
mother's sweet care for her napping child,
and the earth will be a soft cradle
when it receives your hurt childlike body.

I scatter bits of earth and rose dust,
and in the moon's airy and blue powder
what is left of you is a prisoner.

I leave singing my lovely revenge.
No hand will reach into the obscure depth
to argue with me over your handful of bones.


Scheme XXXX XXXX XAA XXX
Poetic Form
Metre 101011111 110110101011 1101111101 0110110 1110010110 101110101 001110110 110111110 110111011 0001100110 1111110100 111011001 1111010011 11011101111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 545
Words 112
Sentences 7
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 3, 3
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 107
Words per stanza (avg) 28
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 22, 2023

34 sec read
303

Gabriela Mistral

Gabriela Mistral was the pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator and feminist who was the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1945. more…

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