Analysis of Sestina
Dante Alighieri 1265 (Florence) – 1321 (Ravenna)
I have come, alas, to the great circle of shadow,
to the short day and to the whitening hills,
when the colour is all lost from the grass,
though my desire will not lose its green,
so rooted is it in this hardest stone,
that speaks and feels as though it were a woman.
And likewise this heaven-born woman
stays frozen, like the snow in shadow,
and is unmoved, or moved like a stone,
by the sweet season that warms all the hills,
and makes them alter from pure white to green,
so as to clothe them with the flowers and grass.
When her head wears a crown of grass
she draws the mind from any other woman,
because she blends her gold hair with the green
so well that Amor lingers in their shadow,
he who fastens me in these low hills,
more certainly than lime fastens stone.
Her beauty has more virtue than rare stone.
The wound she gives cannot be healed with grass,
since I have travelled, through the plains and hills,
to find my release from such a woman,
yet from her light had never a shadow
thrown on me, by hill, wall, or leaves’ green.
I have seen her walk all dressed in green,
so formed she would have sparked love in a stone,
that love I bear for her very shadow,
so that I wished her, in those fields of grass,
as much in love as ever yet was woman,
closed around by all the highest hills.
The rivers will flow upwards to the hills
before this wood, that is so soft and green,
takes fire, as might ever lovely woman,
for me, who would choose to sleep on stone,
all my life, and go eating grass,
only to gaze at where her clothes cast shadow.
Whenever the hills cast blackest shadow,
with her sweet green, the lovely woman
hides it, as a man hides stone in grass.
Scheme | ABCDEF FAEBDC CFDABE ECBFAD DEACFB BDFECA AFC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Sestina (95%) |
Metre | 111011011011 10110101001 101111101 1101011111 1101101101 11011110010 01110110 11010101 010111101 1011011101 0111011111 11111101001 10110111 11011101010 0111011101 1111010011 11110111 11001111 0101110111 0111101111 1111010101 1110111010 110111001 111111111 111011101 1111111001 111110101 1111001111 11011101110 101110101 0101110101 0111111101 11011101010 111111111 11101101 1011110111 010011101 101101010 111011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,648 |
Words | 326 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 3 |
Lines Amount | 39 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 186 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 46 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 18, 2023
- 1:37 min read
- 122 Views
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"Sestina" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 18 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7459/sestina>.
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