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 Views
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"Solar Eclipse" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/34928/solar-eclipse>.
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