Analysis of Home After Three Months Away
Robert Lowell 1917 (Boston) – 1977 (New York City)
Gone now the baby's nurse,
a lioness who ruled the roost
and made the Mother cry.
She used to tie
gobbets of porkrind to bowknots of gauze
three months they hung like soggy toast
on our eight foot magnolia tree,
and helped the English sparrows
weather a Boston winter.
Three months, three months!
Is Richard now himself again?
Dimpled with exaltation,
my daughter holds her levee in the tub.
Our noses rub,
each of us pats a stringy lock of hair
they tell me nothing's gone.
Though I am forty-one,
not forty now, the time I put away
was child's play. After thirteen weeks
my child still dabs her cheeks
to start me shaving. When
we dress her in her sky-blue corduroy,
she changes to a boy,
and floats my shaving brush
and washcloth in the flush...
Dearest I cannot loiter here
in lather like a polar bear.
Recuperating, I neither spin nor toil.
Three stories down below,
a choreman tends our coffin length of soil,
and seven horizontal tulips blow.
Just twelve months ago,
these flowers were pedigreed
imported Dutchmen, now no one need
distinguish them from weed.
Bushed by the late spring snow,
they cannot meet
another year's snowballing enervation.
I keep no rank nor station.
Cured, I am frizzled, stale and small."
Scheme | XABBXXXXX XCCDDEXFXGGCHHIIXE JKJKKALLKXC FX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (25%) Tetractys (23%) |
Metre | 110101 011101 010101 1111 1111111 11111101 110110101 0101010 1001010 1111 11010101 1011 1101010001 10101 1111010111 111101 111101 1101011101 11110111 111101 111101 110001110 110101 011101 01001 10110101 01010101 0100110111 110101 0111010111 010010101 11101 11001 01011111 010111 110111 1101 0101101 1111110 1111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,190 |
Words | 219 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 18, 11, 2 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 241 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 54 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on April 15, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 56 Views
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"Home After Three Months Away" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/56519/home-after-three-months-away>.
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