Analysis of The Paper Nautilus
Marianne Moore 1887 (Kirkwood) – 1972 (New York City)
For authorities whose hopes
are shaped by mercenaries?
Writers entrapped by
teatime fame and by
commuters' comforts? Not for these
the paper nautilus
constructs her thin glass shell.
Giving her perishable
souvenir of hope, a dull
white outside and smooth-
edged inner surface
glossy as the sea, the watchful
maker of it guards it
day and night; she scarcely
eats until the eggs are hatched.
Buried eight-fold in her eight
arms, for she is in
a sense a devil-
fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight
is hid but is not crushed;
as Hercules, bitten
by a crab loyal to the hydra,
was hindered to succeed,
the intensively
watched eggs coming from
the shell free it when they are freed,--
leaving its wasp-nest flaws
of white on white, and close-
laid Ionic chiton-folds
like the lines in the mane of
a Parthenon horse,
round which the arms had
wound themselves as if they knew love
is the only fortress
strong enough to trust to.
Scheme | XABBACX DDXCDXE XFXDFXX XGEXGXX XHXXHCX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (29%) |
Metre | 1010011 111100 10011 1101 01010111 010100 010111 1001000 011101 11101 11010 10101010 101111 101110 1010111 1011001 11110 01010 1011111 111111 11010 101101010 110101 00100 11101 01111111 101111 111101 101011 1010011 0101 11011 10111111 101010 101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 900 |
Words | 165 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 7, 7, 7, 7 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 147 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 49 sec read
- 136 Views
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