Analysis of In everything I seek to grasp...
Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)
In everything I seek to grasp
The fundamental:
The daily choice, the daily task,
The sentimental.
To plumb the essence of the past,
The first foundations,
The crux, the roots, the inmost hearts,
The explanations.
And, puzzling out the weave of fate,
Events observer,
To live, feel, love and meditate
And to discover.
Oh, if my skill did but suffice
After a fashion,
In eight lines I'd anatomize
The parts of passion.
I'd write of sins, forbidden fruit,
Of chance-seized shadows;
Of hasty flight and hot pursuit,
Of palms, of elbows.
Define its laws and origin
In terms judicial,
Repeat the names it glories in,
And the initials.
I'd sinews strain my verse to shape
Like a trim garden:
The limes should blossom down the nape,
A double cordon.
My verse should breathe the fresh-clipped hedge,
Roses and meadows
And mint and new-mown hay and sedge,
The thunder's bellows.
As Chopin once in his etudes
Miraculously conjured
Parks, groves, graves and solitudes-
A living wonder.
The moment of achievement caught
Twixt sport and torment…
A singing bowstring shuddering taut,
A stubborn bow bent.
Scheme | ABXB XCXC DEDE XFCF GHGH FBXX XFAF IHIH XXCE XJXJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (80%) Tetractys (28%) Etheree (28%) |
Metre | 0101111 0010 01010101 0010 11010101 01010 0101011 0010 010010111 01010 1111010 01010 11111101 10010 01111 01110 11111001 1111 11010101 1111 01110100 01010 01011100 00010 1111111 10110 01110101 01010 11110111 1001 01011101 0110 1101011 0100010 11101 01010 01010101 1101 01011001 01011 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,060 |
Words | 185 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 21 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 86 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 18 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 99 Views
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"In everything I seek to grasp..." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4502/in-everything-i-seek-to-grasp...>.
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