Improvisations: Light And Snow: 13

Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)



My heart is an old house, and in that forlorn old house,
In the very centre, dark and forgotten,
Is a locked room where an enchanted princess
Lies sleeping.
But sometimes, in that dark house,
As if almost from the stars, far away,
Sounds whisper in that secret room —
Faint voices, music, a dying trill of laughter?
And suddenly, from her long sleep,
The beautiful princess awakes and dances.
Who is she? I do not know.
Why does she dance? Do not ask me! —
Yet to-day, when I saw you,
When I saw your eyes troubled with the trouble of happiness,
And your mouth trembling into a smile,
And your fingers pull shyly forward, —
Softly, in that room,
The little princess arose
And danced;
And as she danced the old house gravely trembled
With its vague and delicious secret.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

43 sec read
100

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDAEFGHIJKLMNOFPQRS
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 763
Words 144
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 21

Conrad Potter Aiken

Conrad Potter Aiken was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author born in Savannah Georgia whose work includes poetry short stories novels and an autobiography more…

All Conrad Potter Aiken poems | Conrad Potter Aiken Books

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    "Improvisations: Light And Snow: 13" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/7016/improvisations:-light-and-snow:-13>.

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