Analysis of Her Eyes
Edwin Arlington Robinson 1869 – 1935
Up from the street and the crowds that went,
Morning and midnight, to and fro,
Still was the room where his days he spent,
And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.
Year after year, with his dream shut fast,
He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim,
For the love that his brushes had earned at last, --
And the whole world rang with the praise of him.
But he cloaked his triumph, and searched, instead,
Till his cheeks were sere and his hairs were gray.
"There are women enough, God knows," he said. . . .
"There are stars enough -- when the sun's away."
Then he went back to the same still room
That had held his dream in the long ago,
When he buried his days in a nameless tomb,
And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.
And a passionate humor seized him there --
Seized him and held him until there grew
Like life on his canvas, glowing and fair,
A perilous face -- and an angel's, too.
Angel and maiden, and all in one, --
All but the eyes. -- They were there, but yet
They seemed somehow like a soul half done.
What was the matter? Did God forget? . . .
But he wrought them at last with a skill so sure
That her eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman, --
With a gleam of heaven to make them pure,
And a glimmer of hell to make them human.
God never forgets. -- And he worships her
There in that same still room of his,
For his wife, and his constant arbiter
Of the world that was and the world that is.
And he wonders yet what her love could be
To punish him after that strife so grim;
But the longer he lives with her eyes to see,
The plainer it all comes back to him.
Scheme | abaB cdcd efef gbgB hihi jkjk ljlj mnmn odod |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 110100111 1001101 110111111 0010100101 110111111 1100111101 10111101111 0011110111 1111100101 1110101101 1110011111 1110110101 111110111 1111100101 11101100101 0010100101 0010010111 110110111 1111101001 010010111 100100101 110110111 11110111 110101101 11111110111 10100110110 1011101111 00101111110 1100101100 10111111 1110110100 1011100111 0110110111 1101101111 10101110111 010111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,608 |
Words | 321 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 134 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 27, 2023
- 1:36 min read
- 203 Views
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"Her Eyes" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9978/her-eyes>.
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