Analysis of The Star-Bath
Clive Staples Lewis 1898 (Clive Staples Lewis Belfast) – 1963 (Oxford)
A place uplifted towards the midnight sky
Far, far away among the mountains old,
A treeless waste of rocks and freezing cold,
Where the dead, cheerless moon rode neighbouring by-
And in the midst a silent tarn there lay,
A narrow pool, cold as the tide that flows
Where monstrous bergs beyond Varanger stray,
Rising from sunless depths that no man knows;
Thither as clustering fireflies have I seen
At fixed seasons all the stars come down
To wash in that cold wave their brightness clean
And win the special fire wherewith they crown
The wintry heavens in frost. Even as a flock
Of falling birds, down to the pool they came.
I saw them and I heard the icy shock
Of stars engulfed with hissing of faint flame
-Ages ago before the birth of men
Or earliest beast. Yet I was still the same
That now remember, knowing not where or when.
Scheme | ABBACDCDEFEFGHGHIHI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0110001011 1101010101 0101110101 10111111 0001010111 0101110111 11010111 101111111 1110010111 111010111 1101111101 0101010111 010100110101 1101110111 1110110101 1101110111 1001010111 11001111101 11010101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 822 |
Words | 155 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 19 |
Lines Amount | 19 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 664 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 153 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 46 sec read
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