Analysis of Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow
Sara Teasdale 1884 (St. Louis) – 1933 (New York City)
I. Spirit's House
From naked stones of agony
I will build a house for me;
As a mason all alone
I will raise it, stone by stone,
And every stone where I have bled
Will show a sign of dusky red.
I have not gone the way in vain,
For I have good of all my pain;
My spirit's quiet house will be
Built of naked stones I trod
On roads where I lost sight of God.
II. Mastery
I would not have a god come in
To shield me suddenly from sin,
And set my house of life to rights;
Nor angels with bright burning wings
Ordering my earthly thoughts and things;
Rather my own frail guttering lights
Wind blown and nearly beaten out;
Rather the terror of the nights
And long, sick groping after doubt;
Rather be lost than let my soul
Slip vaguely from my own control --
Of my own spirit let me be
In sole though feeble mastery.
III. Lessons
Unless I learn to ask no help
From any other soul but mine,
To seek no strength in waving reeds
Nor shade beneath a straggling pine;
Unless I learn to look at Grief
Unshrinking from her tear-blind eyes,
And take from Pleasure fearlessly
Whatever gifts will make me wise --
Unless I learn these things on earth,
Why was I ever given birth?
IV. Wisdom
When I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange -- my youth.
V. In a Burying Ground
This is the spot where I will lie
When life has had enough of me,
These are the grasses that will blow
Above me like a living sea.
These gay old lilies will not shrink
To draw their life from death of mine,
And I will give my body's fire
To make blue flowers on this vine.
"O Soul," I said, "have you no tears?
Was not the body dear to you?"
I heard my soul say carelessly,
"The myrtle flowers will grow more blue."
VI. Wood Song
I heard a wood thrush in the dusk
Twirl three notes and make a star --
My heart that walked with bitterness
Came back from very far.
Three shining notes were all he had,
And yet they made a starry call --
I caught life back against my breast
And kissed it, scars and all.
VII. Refuge
From my spirit's gray defeat,
From my pulse's flagging beat,
From my hopes that turned to sand
Sifting through my close-clenched hand,
From my own fault's slavery,
If I can sing, I still am free.
For with my singing I can make
A refuge for my spirit's sake,
A house of shining words, to be
My fragile immortality.
Scheme | X AABBCCDDAEE A FFGHHGIGIJJAA X XKXKXLJLMM X HHNNLLOO X XAXA XKXK XPAP X XQXQ XRXR X SSTTAA UUAA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101 11011100 1110111 1010101 1111111 010011111 1101111 11110101 11111111 11010111 1110111 11111111 1100 11110110 11110011 01111111 11011101 100110101 101111001 11010101 10010101 01110101 10111111 11011101 11110111 01110100 110 01111111 11010111 11110101 1101011 01111111 110111 011101 1011111 01111111 11110101 110 11111111 010111 0111001 01110101 11111001 11010101 11110101 01000111 1001001 11011111 11110111 11010111 01110101 11110111 11111111 011111010 11110111 11111111 11010111 11111100 010101111 111 11011001 1110101 11111100 111101 11010111 01110101 11110111 011101 110 1110101 111101 1111111 1011111 1111100 11111111 11110111 01011101 01110111 1100100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,447 |
Words | 494 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 18 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 11, 1, 13, 1, 10, 1, 8, 1, 4, 4, 4, 1, 4, 4, 1, 6, 4 |
Lines Amount | 79 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 107 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 04, 2023
- 2:29 min read
- 151 Views
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"Interlude: Songs out of Sorrow" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/34520/interlude%3A-songs-out-of-sorrow>.
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