Analysis of Improvisations: Light And Snow: 13

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



My heart is an old house, and in that forlorn old house,
In the very centre, dark and forgotten,
Is a locked room where an enchanted princess
Lies sleeping.
But sometimes, in that dark house,
As if almost from the stars, far away,
Sounds whisper in that secret room —
Faint voices, music, a dying trill of laughter?
And suddenly, from her long sleep,
The beautiful princess awakes and dances.
Who is she? I do not know.
Why does she dance? Do not ask me! —
Yet to-day, when I saw you,
When I saw your eyes troubled with the trouble of happiness,
And your mouth trembling into a smile,
And your fingers pull shyly forward, —
Softly, in that room,
The little princess arose
And danced;
And as she danced the old house gravely trembled
With its vague and delicious secret.


Scheme ABCDAEFGHIJKLMNOFPQRS
Poetic Form
Metre 1111110010111 00101010010 10111101010 110 1010111 111101101 11001101 110100101110 01001011 0100101010 1111111 11111111 1111111 111111010101100 0111000101 011011010 10011 0101001 01 01110111010 111001010
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 763
Words 144
Sentences 9
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 21
Lines Amount 21
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 596
Words per stanza (avg) 142
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
100

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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