Analysis of The House Of Dust: Part 01: 04: Up high black walls, up sombre terraces
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
Up high black walls, up sombre terraces,
Clinging like luminous birds to the sides of cliffs,
The yellow lights went climbing towards the sky.
From high black walls, gleaming vaguely with rain,
Each yellow light looked down like a golden eye.
They trembled from coign to coign, and tower to tower,
Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.
And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving,
Restlessly moving in each lamplit room,
From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire;
From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.
And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,
Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;
And there was one who dreamed of a sudden death
As she blew out her light.
And there was one who turned from clamoring streets,
And walked in lamplit gardens among black trees,
And looked at the windy sky,
And thought with terror how stones and roots would freeze
And birds in the dead boughs cry . . .
And she hurried back, as snow fell, mixed with rain,
To mingle among the crowds again,
To jostle beneath blue lamps along the street;
And lost herself in the warm bright coiling dream,
With a sound of murmuring voices and shuffling feet.
And one, from his high bright window looking down
On luminous chasms that cleft the basalt town,
Hearing a sea-like murmur rise,
Desired to leave his dream, descend from the tower,
And drown in waves of shouts and laughter and cries.
Scheme | XXABA CDXD XECEC XXFXF XGAGA BXHXH IIJCJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111100 101100110111 01011100101 1111101011 11011110101 1101111010110 011100101111 0111100101110 01111 001110111110 100100111 11110110110 11011101101 110100010 0111011111 1011010101 1010110010101 01111110101 111101 01111111001 0101100111 0110101 01110110111 0100111 01101111111 110010101 11001110101 0101001111 1011100100101 01111110101 11001110011 10011101 0101111011010 01011101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,560 |
Words | 280 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 34 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 180 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 40 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:24 min read
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"The House Of Dust: Part 01: 04: Up high black walls, up sombre terraces" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7050/the-house-of-dust%3A-part-01%3A-04%3A-up-high-black-walls%2C-up-sombre-terraces>.
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