Analysis of How Is It That I Am Now So Softly Awakened
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
How is it that I am now so softly awakened,
My leaves shaken down with music?—
Darling, I love you.
It is not your mouth, for I have known mouths before,—
Though your mouth is more alive than roses,
Roses singing softly
To green leaves after rain.
It is not your eyes, for I have dived often in eyes,—
Though your eyes, even in the yellow glare of footlights,
Are windows into eternal dusk.
Nor is it the live white flashing of your feet,
Nor your gay hands, catching at motes in the spotlight;
Nor the abrupt thick music of your laughter,
When, against the hideous backdrop,
With all its crudities brilliantly lighted,
Suddenly you catch sight of your alarming shadow,
Whirling and contracting.
How is it, then, that I am so keenly aware,
So sensitive to the surges of the wind, or the light,
Heaving silently under blue seas of air?—
Darling, I love you, I am immersed in you.
It is not the unraveled night-time of your hair,—
Though I grow drunk when you press it upon my face:
And though when you gloss its length with a golden brush
I am strings that tremble under a bow.
It was that night I saw you dancing,
The whirl and impalpable float of your garment,
Your throat lifted, your face aglow
(Like waterlilies in moonlight were your knees).
It was that night I heard you singing
In the green-room after your dance was over,
Faint and uneven through the thickness of walls.
(How shall I come to you through the dullness of walls,
Thrusting aside the hands of bitter opinion?)
It was that afternoon, early in June,
When, tired with a sleepless night, and my act performed,
Feeling as stale as streets,
We met under dropping boughs, and you smiled to me:
And we sat by a watery surface of clouds and sky.
I hear only the susurration of intimate leaves;
The stealthy gliding of branches upon slow air.
I see only the point of your chin in sunlight;
And the sinister blue of sunlight on your hair.
The sunlight settles downward upon us in silence.
Now we thrust up through grass blades and encounter,
Pushing white hands amid the green.
Your face flowers whitely among cold leaves.
Soil clings to you, bark falls from you,
You rouse and stretch upward, exhaling earth, inhaling sky,
I touch you, and we drift off together like moons.
Earth dips from under.
We are alone in an immensity of sunlight,
Specks in an infinite golden radiance,
Whirled and tossed upon silent cataracts and torrents.
Give me your hand darling! We float downward.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRLRCRSTUQVPWQMXXYZ1 2 F3 4 RLR5 M6 4 C3 7 ML5 8 9 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (22%) |
Metre | 1111111110010 11101110 10111 111111111101 1111101110 101010 111101 1111111111001 111100010111 110010101 11101110111 11111011001 10011101110 10101001 111110010 100111110101 100100 111111111001 11001010101101 10100101111 10111110101 111001011111 111111110111 011111110101 1111101001 111111110 010111110 11101101 1101011 111111110 00111011110 10010101011 111111101011 100101110010 111011001 1101010101101 101111 111010101111 01110100101101 11100111001 010101100111 11100111101 00100111111 011010011010 11111110010 10110101 1110100111 11111111 110110110101 111011101011 11110 110101111 10110010100 101011010010 1111101110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,403 |
Words | 448 |
Sentences | 23 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 55 |
Lines Amount | 55 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,917 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 440 |
Font size:
Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:14 min read
- 142 Views
Citation
Use the citation below to add this poem analysis to your bibliography:
Style:MLAChicagoAPA
"How Is It That I Am Now So Softly Awakened" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/6998/how-is-it-that-i-am-now-so-softly-awakened>.
Discuss this Conrad Potter Aiken poem analysis with the community:
Report Comment
We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe.
If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.
Attachment
You need to be logged in to favorite.
Log In