Analysis of Nuit Blanche

Amy Lowell 1874 (Brookline) – 1925 (Brookline)



I want no horns to rouse me up to-night,
And trumpets make too clamorous a ring
To fit my mood, it is so weary white
I have no wish for doing any thing.

A music coaxed from humming strings would please;
Not plucked, but drawn in creeping cadences
Across a sunset wall where some Marquise
Picks a pale rose amid strange silences.

Ghostly and vaporous her gown sweeps by
The twilight dusking wall, I hear her feet
Delaying on the gravel, and a sigh,
Briefly permitted, touches the air like sleet

And it is dark, I hear her feet no more.
A red moon leers beyond the lily-tank.
A drunken moon ogling a sycamore,
Running long fingers down its shining flank.

A lurching moon, as nimble as a clown,
Cuddling the flowers and trees which burn like glass.
Red, kissing lips, I feel you on my gown—
Kiss me, red lips, and then pass—pass.

Music, you are pitiless to-night.
And I so old, so cold, so languorously white.


Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH IJIJ AA
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111111 01011101 1111111101 1111110101 0101110111 1111010100 01011111 1011011100 10010111 01111101 0101010001 10010100111 0111110111 0111010101 01011010 1011011101 0101110101 10010011111 1101111111 11110111 101110011 011111111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 918
Words 170
Sentences 10
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 2
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 32
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 118
Words per stanza (avg) 28
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 03, 2023

51 sec read
165

Amy Lowell

Amy Lawrence Lowell was an American poet of the imagist school from Brookline, Massachusetts who posthumously won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1926. more…

All Amy Lowell poems | Amy Lowell Books

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