Analysis of For M.W.

Jean Toomer 1894 (Washington, D.C.) – 1967 (Doylestown)



There is no transcience of twilight in
The beauty of your soft dusk-dimpled face,
No flicker of a slender flame in space,
In crucibles, fragility crystalline.
There is no fragrance of the jessamine
About you, no pathos of some old place
At dusk, that crumbles like moth-eater lace
Beneath the touch. Nor has there ever been.

Your love is like the folk-song's flaming rise
In cane-lipped southern people, like their soul
Which burst its bondage in a bold travail;
Your voice is like them singing, soft and wise,
Your face, sweetly efflgent of the whole,
Inviolate of ways that would feile.


Scheme ABBXABBA CDXCDD
Poetic Form
Metre 1111110 0101111101 1101010101 01010010 1111010100 0111101111 1111011101 0101111101 1111011101 0111010111 1111000101 1111110101 11101101 010011111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 583
Words 103
Sentences 5
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 234
Words per stanza (avg) 51
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

31 sec read
86

Jean Toomer

Jean Toomer was an American poet and novelist and an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance. more…

All Jean Toomer poems | Jean Toomer Books

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