Analysis of What Grief! The Alley's End

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



What grief! The alley's end
Is lost in snow again today,
And once again, the silver snakes
Are crawling through the snow.

The sky's without a patch of blue,
The steppe's completely smooth and white,
A single crow is struggling hard
To beat its wings against the storm.

My soul is frozen as the land,
There is no sign of dawning there.
My languid thought drops off to sleep
Above my slowly dying work.

But in my heart still glows a hope
That accidentally, perhaps,
My soul will once again grow young
And see its native home once more,

A land where storms may come and go,
Where thought is passionate and pure,-
And where a chosen few can see
How spring and beauty bloom.


Scheme XXXA XXXX XXXX XXXX AXXX
Poetic Form Etheree  (30%)
Tetractys  (25%)
Metre 110101 11010101 01010101 110101 01010111 01010101 010111001 11110101 11110101 11111101 11011111 01110101 10111101 1010001 11110111 01110111 01111101 11110001 01010111 110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 660
Words 128
Sentences 7
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 105
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

39 sec read
99

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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