Analysis of Poseidonians
Constantine P. Cavafy 1863 (Alexandria) – 1933 (Alexandria)
The Poseidonians forgot the Greek language
after so many centuries of mingling
with Tyrrhenians, Latins, and other foreigners.
The only thing surviving from their ancestors
was a Greek festival, with beautiful rites,
with lyres and flutes, contests and wreaths.
And it was their habit toward the festival's end
to tell each other about their ancient customs
and once again to speak Greek names
that only few of them still recognized.
And so their festival always had a melancholy ending
because they remebered that they too were Greeks,
they too once upon a time were citizens of Magna Graecia;
and how low they'd fallen now, what they'd become,
living and speaking like barbarians,
cut off so disastrously from the Greek way of life.
Scheme | ABCCDEFGHIBJKLMN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01010110 101101001100 1110010100 01010101110 10110011001 11011001 0111100101001 111100111010 01011111 110111110 01110011010010 011111101 111010101001101 01111011101 1001010100 1110100101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 727 |
Words | 124 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 16 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 596 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 122 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 38 sec read
- 53 Views
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"Poseidonians" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7217/poseidonians>.
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