Analysis of Things of great worth shall come to pass...

Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)



Things of great worth shall come to pass
By true foreknowledge and in fact,—
Names worthier than mine in fame
And words which earned me men's esteem.

Here breakers roar across the bay;
Wave follows wave unchangeably,
Their tracks, like letters traced in sand,
Erased by ebbing lines of foam.

So yet you're here at this resort.
I should have found you in this hall
At five, instead of vain small talk
I shared and wagging of my tongue.

I would have warned you, one so fair,
Mature, a woman brave and calm,
About the death in life-and bounds
No higher than the ant's low life.

Great poets, through experience,
Find words so simple and restrained
That in the end they can't do more
Than wait in silence and in awe.

In faith and kinship with real life
And with the future knit as one,
We're bound to find immortal words
Of unbelievable simplicity.

Yet keep them holy in your hearts
Or we shall not be spared at all.
Men quickly grasp the complex schemes
When simplicity's their greater need.


Scheme XXXX XAXX XAXX XXXB XXXX BXXX XAXX
Poetic Form
Metre 11111111 111001 11001101 01111101 11010101 11011 11110101 01110111 11111101 11111011 11011111 11010111 11111111 01010101 01010101 11010111 11010100 11110001 10011111 11010001 0101111 01010111 11110101 101000100 11110011 11111111 11010101 111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 970
Words 183
Sentences 10
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 28
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 111
Words per stanza (avg) 26
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

56 sec read
62

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian poet, novelist, and literary translator. more…

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