Analysis of The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
Wind blows. Snow falls. The great clock in its tower
Ticks with reverberant coil and tolls the hour:
At the deep sudden stroke the pigeons fly . . .
The fine snow flutes the cracks between the flagstones.
We close our coats, and hurry, and search the sky.
We are like music, each voice of it pursuing
A golden separate dream, remote, persistent,
Climbing to fire, receding to hoarse despair.
What do you whisper, brother? What do you tell me? . . .
We pass each other, are lost, and do not care.
One mounts up to beauty, serenely singing,
Forgetful of the steps that cry behind him;
One drifts slowly down from a waking dream.
One, foreseeing, lingers forever unmoving . . .
Upward and downward, past him there, we stream.
One has death in his eyes: and walks more slowly.
Death, among jonquils, told him a freezing secret.
A cloud blows over his eyes, he ponders earth.
He sees in the world a forest of sunlit jonquils:
A slow black poison huddles beneath that mirth.
Death, from street to alley, from door to window,
Cries out his news,—of unplumbed worlds approaching,
Of a cloud of darkness soon to destroy the tower.
But why comes death,—he asks,—in a world so perfect?
Or why the minute's grey in the golden hour?
Music, a sudden glissando, sinister, troubled,
A drift of wind-torn petals, before him passes
Down jangled streets, and dies.
The bodies of old and young, of maimed and lovely,
Are slowly borne to earth, with a dirge of cries.
Down cobbled streets they come; down huddled stairways;
Through silent halls; through carven golden doorways;
From freezing rooms as bare as rock.
The curtains are closed across deserted windows.
Earth streams out of the shovel; the pebbles knock.
Mary, whose hands rejoiced to move in sunlight;
Silent Elaine; grave Anne, who sang so clearly;
Fugitive Helen, who loved and walked alone;
Miriam too soon dead, darkly remembered;
Childless Ruth, who sorrowed, but could not atone;
Jean, whose laughter flashed over depths of terror,
And Eloise, who desired to love but dared not;
Doris, who turned alone to the dark and cried,—
They are blown away like windflung chords of music,
They drift away; the sudden music has died.
And one, with death in his eyes, comes walking slowly
And sees the shadow of death in many faces,
And thinks the world is strange.
He desires immortal music and spring forever,
And beauty that knows no change.
Scheme | AABCB DXEFE DXGDG FXHCH XDAXA XIJFJ KKLXL XFMXM AXNXN FIOAO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110110110 111101010 1011010101 0111010101 111010100101 111101111010 01010101010 101100101101 111101011111 11110110111 111110010010 01010111011 1110110101 1010100101 1001011111 11101101110 10111101010 01110111101 11001010111 01110100111 11111011110 1111111010 1011101101010 111111001101 110101001010 10010110010 011111001110 110101 010110111010 11011110111 1101111101 110111101 11011111 010110101010 11110100101 1011011101 10011111110 10010110101 10011110010 1011111101 11101101110 001101011111 10110110101 11101111110 11010101011 011101111010 01011101010 010111 10100101001010 0101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 2,349 |
Words | 413 |
Sentences | 35 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5 |
Lines Amount | 50 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 186 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:04 min read
- 92 Views
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"The House Of Dust: Part 03: 08: Coffins: Interlude" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7073/the-house-of-dust%3A-part-03%3A-08%3A-coffins%3A-interlude>.
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