Analysis of The Room
Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)
Through that window—all else being extinct
Except itself and me—I saw the struggle
Of darkness against darkness. Within the room
It turned and turned, dived downward. Then I saw
How order might—if chaos wished—become:
And saw the darkness crush upon itself,
Contracting powerfully; it was as if
It killed itself, slowly: and with much pain.
Pain. The scene was pain, and nothing but pain.
What else, when chaos draws all forces inward
To shape a single leaf? . . .
For the leaf came
Alone and shining in the empty room;
After a while the twig shot downward from it;
And from the twig a bough; and then the trunk,
Massive and coarse; and last the one black root.
The black root cracked the walls. Boughs burst
the window:
The great tree took possession.
Tree of trees!
Remember (when time comes) how chaos died
To shape the shining leaf. Then turn, have courage,
Wrap arms and roots together, be convulsed
With grief, and bring back chaos out of shape.
I will be watching then as I watch now.
I will praise darkness now, but then the leaf.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHHIJKCLMNOPQRSTAUVJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110111001 01010111010 11001100101 1101110111 1101110101 0101010101 1001001111 1101100111 1011101011 11110111010 110101 1011 0101000101 10010111011 0101010101 1001010111 01110111 010 0111010 111 0101111101 11010111110 110101011 1101110111 1111011111 1111011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,116 |
Words | 186 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 26 |
Lines Amount | 26 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 810 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 187 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 55 sec read
- 67 Views
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