Analysis of Song of the Moon
Claude McKay 1889 (Clarendon Parish) – 1948 (Chicago)
The moonlight breaks upon the city's domes,
And falls along cemented steel and stone,
Upon the grayness of a million homes,
Lugubrious in unchanging monotone.
Upon the clothes behind the tenement,
That hang like ghosts suspended from the lines,
Linking each flat to each indifferent,
Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.
There is no magic from your presence here,
Ho, moon, sad moon, tuck up your trailing robe,
Whose silver seems antique and so severe
Against the glow of one electric globe.
Go spill your beauty on the laughing faces
Of happy flowers that bloom a thousand hues,
Waiting on tiptoe in the wilding spaces,
To drink your wine mixed with sweet drafts of dews.
Scheme | ABABCDCD XEXE FGFG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011010101 0101010101 010110101 0100001010 0101010100 1111010101 101111010 010001011 1111011101 1111111101 1101010101 0101110101 11110101010 11010110101 1011001010 1111111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 676 |
Words | 117 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 183 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 38 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 35 sec read
- 235 Views
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"Song of the Moon" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/6885/song-of-the-moon>.
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