Analysis of Solar Eclipse

Siegfried Sassoon 1886 (Matfield) – 1967 (Heytesbury)



Observe these blue solemnities of sky
Offering for the academes of after-ages
A mythologic welkin freaked with white!

Listen : one tiny tinkling rivulet
Accentuates the super-sultry stillness
That drones on ripening landscapes which imply
Serene Parnassus plagued with amorous goats.
* * * *
Far down the vale Apollo has pursued
The noon-bedazzled nymph whose hunted heart
Holds but the trampling panic whence it fled,
And now the heavens are piled with darkening trouble
And counter-march of clouds that troop intent
Fire-crested into conflict.
Daphne turns
At the wood's edge in bronze and olive gloom:
Sickness assails the sun whose blazing disc
Dwindles : the Eden of those auburn slopes
Lours in the tarnished copper of eclipse.

Yet virgin in her god-impelled approach
To Graeco-Roman ravishment, she waits
While the unsated python slides to crush
Her lust-eluding fleetness. Envious Jove
Rumbles Olympus. All the classic world
Leans breathless toward the legend she creates.

From thunderous vapour smites the immortal beam . . .
Then, crowned with fangs of foliage, flames the god.
* * * *
' Apollo ! ' ... Up the autumn valley echoes
A hollow shout from nowhere. Daphne's limbs
Lapse into laureldom : green-shadowed flesh
Writhes aborescent; glamour obscures her gaze
With blind and bossed distortion. She escapes.


Scheme AXB BXAX XXXXXXXXXXX XCXXXC XX XXXXX
Poetic Form
Metre 0111111 10010111010 011111 101101001 01000101010 1111001101 0110111001 1 1101010101 01111101 1101010111 0101011110010 0101111101 10100110 101 1011010101 1001011101 1001011101 1001010101 1100010101 1110111 10110111 0101011001 1001010101 11001010101 11001100101 1111110101 1 01010101010 010111101 10111101 11100101 1101010101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,297
Words 207
Sentences 17
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 3, 16, 6, 8
Lines Amount 33
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 265
Words per stanza (avg) 53
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 07, 2023

1:02 min read
67

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon, CBE, MC was an eminent English poet, writer, and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's view, were responsible for a jingoism-fuelled war. He later won acclaim for his prose work, notably his three-volume fictionalised autobiography, collectively known as the "Sherston trilogy". more…

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