Analysis of Bad Days
Boris Pasternak 1890 (Moscow) – 1960 (Peredelkino)
When Passion week started and Jesus
Came down to the city, that day
Hosannahs burst out at his entry
And palm leaves were strewn in his way.
But days grow more stern and more stormy.
No love can men's hardness unbend;
Their brows are contemptuously frowning,
And now comes the postscript, the end.
Grey, leaden and heavy, the heavens
Were pressing on treetops and roofs.
The Pharisees, fawning like foxes,
Were secretly searching for proofs.
The lords of the Temple let scoundrels
Pass judgement, and those who at first
Had fervently followed and hailed him,
Now all just as zealously cursed.
The crowd on the neighbouring sector
Was looking inside through the gate.
They jostled, intent on the outcome,
Bewildered and willing to wait.
And whispers and rumours were creeping,
Repeating the dominant theme.
The flight into Egypt, his childhood
Already seemed faint as a dream.
And Jesus remembered the desert,
The days in the wilderness spent,
The tempting with power by Satan,
That lofty, majestic descent.
He thought of the wedding at Cana,
The feast and the miracles; and
How once he had walked on the waters
Through mist to a boat, as on land;
The beggarly crowd in a hovel,
The cellar to which he was led;
How, started, the candle-flame guttered,
When Lazarus rose from the dead…
Scheme | XABA BCDC XEXE XFXF XGXG DHXH XIXI XXXX XJXJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (89%) |
Metre | 110110010 11101011 1111110 01101011 111110110 1111101 111010010 0110101 110010010 0101101 0110110 01001011 011010110 11001111 110010011 11111001 0110110 11001101 11001101 01001011 01000010 01001001 01011011 01011101 010010010 01001001 010110110 11001001 111010110 01001000 111111010 11101111 0110010 01011111 110010110 11001101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,258 |
Words | 222 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 114 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 24 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 16, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 136 Views
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"Bad Days" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/4471/bad-days>.
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