Analysis of from The Women At Point Sur
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
Here were new idols again to praise him;
I made them alive; but when they looked up at the face before
they had seen it they were drunken and fell down.
I have seen and not fallen, I am stronger than the idols,
But my tongue is stone how could I speak him? My blood in my
veins is seawater how could it catch fire?
The rock shining dark rays and the rounded
Crystal the ocean his beam of blackness and silence
Edged with azure, bordered with voices;
The moon her brittle tranquillity; the great phantoms, the foun-
tains of light, the seed of the sky,
Their plaintive splendors whistling to each other:
There is nothing but shines though it shine darkness; nothing but
answers; they are caught in the net of their voices
Though the voices be silence; they are woven in the nerve-warp.
One people, the stars and the people, one structure; the voids
between stars, the voids between atoms, and the vacancy
In the atom in the rings of the spinning demons,
Are full of that weaving; one emptiness, one presence: who had
watched all his splendor
Had known but a little: all his night, but a little.
I made glass puppets to speak of him, they splintered in my hand
and have cut me, they are heavy with my blood.
But the jewel-eyed herons have never beheld him
Nor heard; nor the tall owl with cat's ears, the bittern in the
willows, the squid in the rock in the silence of the ocean,
The vulture that broods in the pitch of the blue
And sees the earth globed, her edges dripping into rainbow twi-
lights: eyed hungers, blind fragments: I sometime
Shall fashion images great enough to face him
A moment and speak while they die. These here have gone mad:
but stammer the tragedy you crackled vessels.
Scheme | A XB C DE F X G BD E XG X XX X HE X XF A XX X XX A HC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011001111 111011111110101 11111010011 111011011101010 11111111111101 1110111110 0110110010 1001011110010 111010110 010101011001 11101101 1101101110 11101111110101 101110011110 101011011100011 11001001011001 01101011000100 0010001101010 111110110011011 11110 1110101111010 111101111110011 01111110111 101011011011 1110111110100 10100100101010 01011001101 01011010100111 11111011 110100101111 0100111111111 110010011010 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,705 |
Words | 315 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 22 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 42 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 61 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 14 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:34 min read
- 162 Views
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