Analysis of A Little Scraping
Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)
True, the time, to one who does not love farce,
And if misery must be prefers it nobler, shows apparent vices;
At least it provides the cure for ambition.
One does not crave power in ant-hills, nor praise in a paper forest;
One must not even indulge the severe
Romance of separateness, as of Milton grown blind and old
In his broken temple against the drunkards:
The ants are good creatures, there is nothing to be heroic about.
But the time is not a strong prison either.
A little scraping the walls of dishonest contractor's concrete
Through a shower of chips and sand makes freedom.
Shake the dust from your hair. This mountain sea-coast is real,
For it reaches out far into past and future;
It is part of the great and timeless excellence of things. A few
Lean cows drift high up the bronze hill;
The heavy-necked plow-team furrows the foreland, gulls tread the furrow;
Time ebbs and flows but the rock remains.
Two riders of tired horses canter on the cloudy ridge;
Topaz-eyed hawks have the white air;
Or a woman with jade-pale eyes, hiding a knife in her hand,
Goes through cold rain over gray grass.
God is here, too, secretly smiling, the beautiful power
That piles up cities for the poem of their fall
And gathers multitude like game to be hunted when the season comes.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKLIMNOPQRSTIUV |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011111111 011001101110101010 11101011010 11111001111001010 1111001001 011100011101101 01101001010 01111011101101001 10111011010 010100110101001 10101101110 1011111101111 111011011010 1111010101001101 11111011 01011110111010 110110101 110110101010101 1111011 101011111001001 11111011 111110010010010 111101010111 0101011111010101 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,264 |
Words | 232 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 24 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 42 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,012 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 230 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 1:09 min read
- 177 Views
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