Analysis of Improvisations: Light And Snow: 03

Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)



The first bell is silver,
And breathing darkness I think only of the long scythe of time.
The second bell is crimson,
And I think of a holiday night, with rockets
Furrowing the sky with red, and a soft shatter of stars.
The third bell is saffron and slow,
And I behold a long sunset over the sea
With wall on wall of castled cloud and glittering balustrades.
The fourth bell is color of bronze,
I walk by a frozen lake in the dun light of dusk:
Muffled crackings run in the ice,
Trees creak, birds fly.
The fifth bell is cold clear azure,
Delicately tinged with green:
One golden star hangs melting in it,
And towards this, sleepily, I go.
The sixth bell is as if a pebble
Had been dropped into a deep sea far above me . . .
Rings of sound ebb slowly into the silence.


Scheme ABCDEFGDHIJKALMFNGO
Poetic Form
Metre 011110 010101110101111 0101110 01110101110 101110011011 01111001 01010111001 111111101001 01111011 1110101001111 1011001 1111 01111110 1000111 110111001 001110011 011111010 111010111011 11111001010
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 758
Words 149
Sentences 10
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 19
Lines Amount 19
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 596
Words per stanza (avg) 150
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
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Conrad Potter Aiken

Conrad Potter Aiken was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author born in Savannah Georgia whose work includes poetry short stories novels and an autobiography more…

All Conrad Potter Aiken poems | Conrad Potter Aiken Books

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