Analysis of Sweet Julia (A Funeral Song)
A dawn brings small-town Julia
into her Daddy's church; she'll grow
to bear a preacher of her own.
A dusk brings small-town Julia to home
out of a room where she poured her hard-earned
knowledge into men. Her husband fought the
Great War and built our homes with stone.
It's said they worked the fields; they sowed
In a lockstep born of love. The railroad
took her loved ones, a sister and a son.
She held her sister's sons close and prayed
to carry on. Now the bone white of the river
Styx has become sweet Jordan's swells.
And its waters toss her high from an iron bed.
She rubbed between her fingers the tangy salt
of life she leavened bitter bread with, a stout
unflinching light. Let the mountains bend
their ears, now; starry skies drop out of sight.
Let the vast plains of her homeland
bid sweet Julia a fond good night.
Scheme | ABCDEACFGHIJKLMNOPQP |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 0111110 01010111 11010101 011111011 1101111011 1001101010 110110111 11110111 00111101 1011010001 110101101 110110111010 11011101 011010111101 1101010011 11110101101 010110101 1111011111 1011101 11100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 808 |
Words | 154 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 649 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 154 |
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Submitted on May 01, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 47 sec read
- 2 Views
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"Sweet Julia (A Funeral Song)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/85571/sweet-julia-%28a-funeral-song%29>.
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