Analysis of The Coal Picker
Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)
He perches in the slime, inert,
Bedaubed with iridescent dirt.
The oil upon the puddles dries
To colours like a peacock's eyes,
And half-submerged tomato-cans
Shine scaly, as leviathans
Oozily crawling through the mud.
The ground is here and there bestud
With lumps of only part-burned coal.
His duty is to glean the whole,
To pick them from the filth, each one,
To hoard them for the hidden sun
Which glows within each fiery core
And waits to be made free once more.
Their sharp and glistening edges cut
His stiffened fingers. Through the smut
Gleam red the wounds which will not shut.
Wet through and shivering he kneels
And digs the slippery coals; like eels
They slide about. His force all spent,
He counts his small accomplishment.
A half-a-dozen clinker-coals
Which still have fire in their souls.
Fire! And in his thought there burns
The topaz fire of votive urns.
He sees it fling from hill to hill,
And still consumed, is burning still.
Higher and higher leaps the flame,
The smoke an ever-shifting frame.
He sees a Spanish Castle old,
With silver steps and paths of gold.
From myrtle bowers comes the plash
Of fountains, and the emerald flash
Of parrots in the orange trees,
Whose blossoms pasture humming bees.
He knows he feeds the urns whose smoke
Bears visions, that his master-stroke
Is out of dirt and misery
To light the fire of poesy.
He sees the glory, yet he knows
That others cannot see his shows.
To them his smoke is sightless, black,
His votive vessels but a pack
Of old discarded shards, his fire
A peddler's; still to him the pyre
Is incensed, an enduring goal!
He sighs and grubs another coal.
Scheme | AABBCBDAEEFFGGHHHBIJKLLMBNNOOPPQQRRSSTBUUVVWWEE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11000101 110101 01010101 111011 0101011 1111 110101 0111011 11110111 11011101 11110111 11110101 110111001 01111111 110100101 11010101 11011111 11010011 010100111 11011111 11110100 0101011 11110011 10001111 0110111 11111111 01011101 10010101 01110101 11010101 11010111 11010101 11000101 11000101 11010101 11110111 11011101 11110100 1101011 11010111 11010111 1111111 1110101 110101110 01111010 1110101 11010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,582 |
Words | 289 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 47 |
Lines Amount | 47 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,283 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 287 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 01, 2023
- 1:27 min read
- 71 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"The Coal Picker" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2304/the-coal-picker>.
Discuss this Amy Lowell poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In