Analysis of Repose Of Rivers

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



The willows carried a slow sound,
A sarabande the wind mowed on the mead.
I could never remember
That seething, steady leveling of the marshes
Till age had brought me to the sea.

Flags, weeds. And remembrance of steep alcoves
Where cypresses shared the noon’s
Tyranny; they drew me into hades almost.
And mammoth turtles climbing sulphur dreams
Yielded, while sun-silt rippled them
Asunder ...

How much I would have bartered! the black gorge
And all the singular nestings in the hills
Where beavers learn stitch and tooth.
The pond I entered once and quickly fled—
I remember now its singing willow rim.

And finally, in that memory all things nurse;
After the city that I finally passed
With scalding unguents spread and smoking darts
The monsoon cut across the delta
At gulf gates ... There, beyond the dykes

I heard wind flaking sapphire, like this summer,
And willows could not hold more steady sound.


Scheme AXBXX XXXXXB XXXXX XXXXX BA
Poetic Form
Metre 0110011 01011101 1110010 110101001010 11111101 110010111 11101 10011101101 0101010101 10111101 010 1111110011 0101001001 1101101 0111010101 1010111011 010001100111 10010111001 110110101 001101010 11110101 111101001110 011111101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 916
Words 155
Sentences 11
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 5, 6, 5, 5, 2
Lines Amount 23
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 145
Words per stanza (avg) 31
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 09, 2023

46 sec read
125

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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