Analysis of Inscription For A Gravestone

Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)



I am not dead, I have only become inhuman:
That is to say,
Undressed myself of laughable prides and infirmities,
But not as a man
Undresses to creep into bed, but like an athlete
Stripping for the race.
The delicate ravel of nerves that made me a measurer
Of certain fictions
Called good and evil; that made me contract with pain
And expand with pleasure;
Fussily adjusted like a little electroscope:
That's gone, it is true;
(I never miss it; if the universe does,
How easily replaced!)
But all the rest is heightened, widened, set free.
I admired the beauty
While I was human, now I am part of the beauty.
I wander in the air,
Being mostly gas and water, and flow in the ocean;
Touch you and Asia
At the same moment; have a hand in the sunrises
And the glow of this grass.
I left the light precipitate of ashes to earth
For a love-token.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIGJGKLGMMGANBOPA
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111001010 1111 0111100100100 11101 1110111111 10101 0100101111101 11010 11010111111 001110 101010101 11111 1101110101 11001 11011101011 1010010 1111011111010 110001 10101010010010 11010 10110101001 001111 110101011011 10110
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 824
Words 161
Sentences 7
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 24
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 653
Words per stanza (avg) 158
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 10, 2023

48 sec read
215

Robinson Jeffers

John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. more…

All Robinson Jeffers poems | Robinson Jeffers Books

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