Analysis of The Stranger (La Extranjera)
Gabriela Mistral 1889 (Vicuña) – 1957 (Hempstead)
She speaks in her way of her savage seas
With unknown algae and unknown sands;
She prays to a formless, weightless God,
Aged, as if dying.
In our garden now so strange,
She has planted cactus and alien grass.
The desert zephyr fills her with its breath
And she has loved with a fierce, white passion
She never speaks of, for if she were to tell
It would be like the face of unknown stars.
Among us she may live for eighty years,
Yet always as if newly come,
Speaking a tongue that plants and whines
Only by tiny creatures understood.
And she will die here in our midst
One night of utmost suffering,
With only her fate as a pillow,
And death, silent and strang.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNODPQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1100110101 101100011 11101101 11110 01010111 11101001001 0101010111 0111101110 11011111011 1111011011 0111111101 1111101 10011101 101101001 011110101 1111100 110011010 011001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 652 |
Words | 128 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 18 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 519 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 126 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 20, 2023
- 38 sec read
- 161 Views
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"The Stranger (La Extranjera)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 17 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/14517/the-stranger-%28la-extranjera%29>.
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