Analysis of Grief
Edith Wharton 1862 (New York City) – 1937 (Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt)
On immemorial altitudes august
Grief holds her high dominion. Bold the feet
That climb unblenching to that stern retreat
Whence, looking down, man knows himself but dust.
There lie the mightiest passions, earthward thrust
Beneath her regnant footstool, and there meet
Pale ghosts of buried longings that were sweet,
With many an abdicated “shall” and “must.”
For there she rules omnipotent, whose will
Compels a mute acceptance of her chart;
Who holds the world, and lo! it cannot fill
Her mighty hand; who will be served apart
With uncommunicable rites, and still
Surrender of the undivided heart.
She holds the world within her mighty hand,
And lo! it is a toy for babes to toss,
And all its shining imagery but dross,
To those that in her awful presence stand;
As sun-confronting eagles o’er the land
That lies below, they send their gaze across
The common intervals of gain and loss,
And hope’s infinitude without a strand.
But he who, on that lonely eminence,
Watches too long the whirling of the spheres
Through dim eternities, descending thence
The voices of his kind no longer hears,
And, blinded by the spectacle immense,
Journeys alone through all the after years.
Scheme | ABBAABBA CDCDCD EFFEEFFE XGHXHG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101001010 1101010101 11111101 1101110111 1101001011 01011011 1111010101 1101100101 1111010011 0101010101 1101011101 0101111101 11101 010100101 1101010101 0111011111 0111010011 1110010101 1101010101 1101111101 0101001101 0110101 1111110100 1011010101 1110101 0101111101 0101010001 1001110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,170 |
Words | 203 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6, 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 235 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 50 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 29, 2023
- 1:00 min read
- 71 Views
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"Grief" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9078/grief>.
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