Analysis of If the Moon on the skies Does not Roam

Anna Akhmatova 1889 (Odessa) – 1966 (Moscow)



If the moon on the skies does not roam,
But cools, like a seal above,
My dead husband enters the home
To read the letters of love.

He remembers the box, made of oak,
With the lock, very secret and odd,
And spreads through a floor the stroke
Of his feet in the iron bond.

He watches the times of the meetings
And the signatures' blurry set.
Hasn't had he sufficiently grievings
And pains in this word until that?


Scheme ABAB CXCX DXDX
Poetic Form Quatrain  (33%)
Metre 101101111 1110101 11101001 1101011 101001111 101101001 0110101 11100101 110011010 00100101 101101001 01011011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 408
Words 81
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 107
Words per stanza (avg) 26
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

24 sec read
75

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova was born in 1889 in Odessa on the Black Sea coast. In 1910 she married Nikolai Gumilev, who was also a poet. He was shot as an alleged counter-revolutionary in 1921. Very little of Akhmatova's poetry was published between 1923 and 1941. After Stalin's death her poetry began to be published again. She died in 1966, in a suburb of Moscow. more…

All Anna Akhmatova poems | Anna Akhmatova Books

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