Analysis of Stravinsky's Three Pieces
Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)
Thin-voiced, nasal pipes
Drawing sound out and out
Until it is a screeching thread,
Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,
It hurts.
Whee-e-e!
Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump!
There are drums here,
Banging,
And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones
Of the market-place.
Whee-e-e!
Sabots slapping the worn, old stones,
And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones;
Clumsy and hard they are,
And uneven,
Losing half a beat
Because the stones are slippery.
Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong!
The thin Spring leaves
Shake to the banging of shoes.
Shoes beat, slap,
Shuffle, rap,
And the nasal pipes squeal with their pigs' voices,
Little pigs' voices
Weaving among the dancers,
A fine white thread
Linking up the dancers.
Bang! Bump! Tong!
Petticoats,
Stockings,
Sabots,
Delirium flapping its thigh-bones;
Red, blue, yellow,
Drunkenness steaming in colours;
Red, yellow, blue,
Colours and flesh weaving together,
In and out, with the dance,
Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together.
Pigs' cries white and tenuous,
White and painful,
White and -
Bump!
Tong!
Pale violin music whiffs across the moon,
A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon,
Cherry petals fall and flutter,
And the white Pierrot,
Wreathed in the smoke of the violins,
Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling,
Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth
With his finger-nails.
An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a church,
It wheezes and coughs.
The nave is blue with incense,
Writhing, twisting,
Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests.
`Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine';
The priests whine their bastard Latin
And the censers swing and click.
The priests walk endlessly
Round and round,
Droning their Latin
Off the key.
The organ crashes out in a flaring chord,
And the priests hitch their chant up half a tone.
`Dies illa, dies irae,
Calamitatis et miseriae,
Dies magna et amara valde.'
A wind rattles the leaded windows.
The little pear-shaped candle flames leap and flutter,
`Dies illa, dies irae;'
The swaying smoke drifts over the altar,
`Calamitatis et miseriae;'
The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water,
`Dies magna et amara valde;'
And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them
Stretched upon a bier.
His ears are stone to the organ,
His eyes are flint to the candles,
His body is ice to the water.
Chant, priests,
Whine, shuffle, genuflect,
He will always be as rigid as he is now
Until he crumbles away in a dust heap.
`Lacrymosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.'
Above the grey pillars the roof is in darkness.
Scheme | abcdxEfgdhxEhhxixejxxkkllmcmjxxahnaxoxopxxfj qqobxdxx xxxdreixexiexxGGBxoGoGoBxgixorbxxnnap |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11101 101101 01110101 10101010 11 111 11111 1111 10 0101100111 10101 111 1100111 00100101101 100111 0010 10101 01011100 11111111 0111 1101011 111 101 00101111110 10110 1001010 0111 101010 111 10 10 1 010010111 1110 1001001 1101 10110010 001101 1101110010 1110100 1010 10 1 1 10011010101 01110011011001 10101010 0011 100110001 1110101010 1011010011 11101 1101001011101 11001 0111101 1010 10100110101 1001101010 01111010 001101 011100 101 10110 101 01010100101 0011111101 1111 111 11010101 011001010 010111011010 1111 0101110010 111 0101101010 11010101 011011000111 10101 11111010 11111010 110111010 11 1101 11111101111 01110010011 111 1111 1101 010110011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,508 |
Words | 437 |
Sentences | 33 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 44, 8, 37 |
Lines Amount | 89 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 665 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 141 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 2:09 min read
- 81 Views
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"Stravinsky's Three Pieces" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2288/stravinsky%27s-three-pieces>.
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