Analysis of A High-Toned Old Christian Woman
Wallace Stevens 1879 (Reading) – 1955 (Hartford)
Poetry is the supreme fiction, madame.
Take the moral law and make a nave of it
And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus,
The conscience is converted into palms,
Like windy citherns hankering for hymns.
We agree in principle. That's clear. But take
The opposing law and make a peristyle,
And from the peristyle project a masque
Beyond the planets. Thus, our bawdiness,
Unpurged by epitaph, indulged at last,
Is equally converted into palms,
Squiggling like saxophones. And palm for palm,
Madame, we are where we began. Allow,
Therefore, that in the planetary scene
Your disaffected flagellants, well-stuffed,
Smacking their muzzy bellies in parade,
Proud of such novelties of the sublime,
Such tink and tank and tunk-a-tunk-tunk,
May, merely may, madame, whip from themselves
A jovial hullabaloo among the spheres.
This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince.
Scheme | ABCDEFGFCHDIJKLMNFOPQR |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10010011010 10101010111 0101110101 0101010011 110110011 10101001111 0010101010 010101001 010101101 11100111 1100010011 11100111 1011110101 11001001 1010111 1011010001 1111001001 110101011 1101101101 01000010101 111101111 1111111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 901 |
Words | 150 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 22 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 729 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 148 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 45 sec read
- 113 Views
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