Analysis of The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . .
It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
Down golden-windowed walls.
We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.
The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . .
One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.
One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
And coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him,
And throwing him pennies, we bear away
A mournful echo of other times and places,
And follow a dream . . . a dream that will not stay.
Down long broad flights of lamplit stairs we flow;
Noisy, in scattered waves, crowding and shouting;
In broken slow cascades.
The gardens extend before us . . . We spread out swiftly;
Trees are above us, and darkness. The canyon fades . . .
And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,
Vaguely and incoherently, some dream
Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . .
A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam;
Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.
We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea;
We reach to the west, where the whirling sun went down;
We close our eyes to music in bright cafes.
We diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent.
We loaf where the wind-spilled fountain plays.
And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,
Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers,
Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb;
Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.
Scheme | ABBAXXX XCDEC DCCXCDFXF CXGEG XHIHI EXJXJ XXKHK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110111011 1100111101 110101 10111100111 111010011111 1111110111001 111101 01110111111 1101111101 11110111011 1110111011010 11011111111 1111001011011 011101111110 11101110101 1111111101110 011100111111 011001101011 0101101101 010101101010 01001011111 111111111 10010110010 010101 0100101111110 110110100101 01110101110 1000010011 101111011111 01110011111 110010011 1110110111001 111011010111 11101110011 101111111110 111011101 01010110111 01010101111010 110110101 1011110111 11111101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,983 |
Words | 367 |
Sentences | 33 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 7, 5, 9, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 41 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 215 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:50 min read
- 28 Views
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"The House Of Dust: Part 01: 05: The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7051/the-house-of-dust%3A-part-01%3A-05%3A-the-snow-floats-down-upon-us%2C-mingled-with-rain>.
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