Analysis of Chaplinesque

Harold Hart Crane 1899 (Garrettsville, Ohio) – 1932 (Gulf of Mexico)



We will make our meek adjustments,
Contented with such random consolations
As the wind deposits
In slithered and too ample pockets.

For we can still love the world, who find
A famished kitten on the step, and know
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,
Or warm torn elbow coverts.

We will sidestep, and to the final smirk
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,
Facing the dull squint with what innocence
And what surprise!

And yet these fine collapses are not lies
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:
What blame to us if the heart live on.

The game enforces smirks; but we have seen
The moon in lonely alleys make
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,
And through all sound of gaiety and quest
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.


Scheme AXXX XXXA XXBXC CXCXX XXXXB
Poetic Form
Metre 111101010 0101110010 101010 01011010 111110111 0101010101 100111010101 11111 111010101 100111010001 11011110011 1001111100 0101 0111010111 11001110101 1011001110 11011011101 111110111 0101011111 01010101 01110111011 01111101 1101000100
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 876
Words 168
Sentences 7
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 5, 5, 5
Lines Amount 23
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 141
Words per stanza (avg) 33
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

50 sec read
96

Harold Hart Crane

Harold Hart Crane was an American poet. Finding both inspiration and provocation in the poetry of T. S. Eliot, Crane wrote modernist poetry that was difficult, highly stylized, and ambitious in its scope. In his most ambitious work, The Bridge, Crane sought to write an epic poem, in the vein of The Waste Land, that expressed a more optimistic view of modern, urban culture than the one that he found in Eliot's work. In the years following his suicide at the age of 32, Crane has been hailed by playwrights, poets, and literary critics alike (including Robert Lowell, Derek Walcott, Tennessee Williams, and Harold Bloom), as being one of the most influential poets of his generation.  more…

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