Analysis of Winter Sky
Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)
Ice-chips plucked whole from the smoke,
the past week’s stars all frozen in flight,
Head over heels the skater’s club goes,
clinking its rink with the peal of night.
Step slow, slower, slow-er, skater,
pride carving its trace as you race by.
each turn’s a constellation cut there,
scratched by a skate in Norway’s sky.
The air is fettered in frozen iron.
Oh, skaters! There – it’s all the same,
that, like snake’s eyes set in ivory,
night’s on earth, a domino game:
that moon, a numb hound’s tongue
is there, frozen tight: that mouths like
the forgers of coins’ – are stung,
filled with lava of breathtaking ice.
Scheme | X A X A X B X B X C X C D X D X |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111101 011111001 110101011 11110111 11101010 110111111 11001011 1101011 0111001010 11011101 111110100 1110101 110111 11101111 0101111 11101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 627 |
Words | 111 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 16 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 29 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 7 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 33 sec read
- 96 Views
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"Winter Sky" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 21 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4574/winter-sky>.
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