Analysis of By Life Tormented

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet 1820 (Mtsensk) – 1892 (Moscow)



By life tormented, and by cunning hope,
When my soul surrenders in its battle with them,
Day and night I press my eyelids closed
And sometimes I'm vouchsafed peculiar visions.

The gloom of quotidian existence deepens,
As after a bright flash of autumn lightning,
And only in the sky, like a call from the heart,
The stars' golden eyelashes sparkle.

And the flames of infinity are so transparent,
And the entire abyss of ether is so close,
That I gaze direct from time into eternity
And recognize your flame, universal sun.

Motionless, encircled by fiery roses,
The living altar of the cosmos smolders
And in its smoke, as in creative slumber,
All forces quiver, eternity's a dream.

And all that rushes through the abyss of ether,
And every ray, embodied or ethereal,-
Is but your reflection, O universal sun,
It is but a dream, but a fleeting dream.

Through the worldly breath of these reveries
I fly like smoke, involuntarily disperse,
And in this vision, in this delirium,
I can live with ease and breathe without pain.

In the darkness and still of a mysterious night
I see a fond and welcoming spark,
From the chorus of spheres, familiar eyes
Shine upon a grave forgotten in the steppe.

The grass has faded, the desert is grim,
A lonely tomb dreams an orphan's dream,
And only in the sky, like an eternal idea,
The stars' golden eyelashes sparkle.

And I dream you've risen from the dead,
Unchanged since you departed the earth,
And I dream a dream: we both are young,
And you've looked at me as you did back then.


Scheme xxxa axxB xxxc xade dbce xxxx xxxx xexB xxxx
Poetic Form
Metre 111001101 111010011011 10111111 0011101010 011101010 11001111010 010001101101 01101010 0011010011010 0001001110111 1110111010100 010110101 100010110010 0101010101 00111001010 11010101 011101001110 0100101010100 11101010101 1110110101 1010111100 1111010001 00110010100 1111101011 0010011001001 110101001 1010110101 10101010001 0111001011 01011111 01000111010010 01101010 011110101 011101001 011011111 0111111111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,490
Words 273
Sentences 10
Stanzas 9
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 36
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 133
Words per stanza (avg) 30
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:23 min read
85

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet

Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet, later known as Shenshin, was a renowned Russian poet regarded as the finest master of lyric verse in Russian literature. more…

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