Analysis of Dead Musicians
From you, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart,
The substance of my dreams took fire.
You built cathedrals in my heart,
And lit my pinnacled desire.
You were the ardour and the bright
Procession of my thoughts toward prayer.
You were the wrath of storm, the light
On distant citadels aflare.
Great names, I cannot find you now
In these loud years of youth that strives
Through doom toward peace: upon my brow
I wear a wreath of banished lives.
You have no part with lads who fought
And laughed and suffered at my side.
Your fugues and symphonies have brought
No memory of my friends who died.
For when my brain is on their track,
In slangy speech I call them back.
With fox-trot tunes their ghosts I charm.
‘Another little drink won’t do us any harm.’
I think of rag-time; a bit of rag-time;
And see their faces crowding round
To the sound of the syncopated beat.
They’ve got such jolly things to tell,
Home from hell with a Blighty wound so neat...
. . . .
And so the song breaks off; and I’m alone.
They’re dead ... For God’s sake stop that gramophone.
Scheme | ABABCXCB DXDXEFEF GGHHXXIXI XD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11100110 010111110 11010011 0111010 1001001 010111011 10011101 11011 11110111 01111111 110110111 11011101 11111111 01010111 11010011 110011111 11111111 0111111 11111111 010101111101 1111101111 01110101 101101001 11110111 111101111 1 0101110101 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,067 |
Words | 195 |
Sentences | 20 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 9, 3 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 29 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 201 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 03, 2023
- 58 sec read
- 70 Views
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"Dead Musicians" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/34868/dead-musicians>.
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