Analysis of The Quarry
Between the rice swamps and the fields of tea
I met a sacred elephant, snow-white.
Upon his back a huge pagoda towered
Full of brass gods and food of sacrifice.
Upon his forehead sat a golden throne,
The massy metal twisted into shapes
Grotesque, antediluvian, such as move
In myth or have their broken images
Sealed in the stony middle of the hills.
A peacock spread his thousand dyes to screen
The yellow sunlight from the head of one
Who sat upon the throne, clad stiff with gems,
Heirlooms of dynasties of buried kings,--
Himself the likeness of a buried king,
With frozen gesture and unfocused eyes.
The trappings of the beast were over-scrawled
With broideries--sea-shapes and flying things,
Fan-trees and dwarfed nodosities of pine,
Mixed with old alphabets, and faded lore
Fallen from ecstatic mouths before the Flood,
Or gathered by the daughters when they walked
Eastward in Eden with the Sons of God
Whom love and the deep moon made garrulous
Between the carven tusks his trunk hung dead;
Blind as the eyes of pearl in Buddha's brow
His beaded eyes stared thwart upon the road;
And feebler than the doting knees of eid,
His joints, of size to swing the builder's crane
Across the war-walls of the Anakim,
Made vain and shaken haste. Good need was his
To hasten: panting, foaming, on the slot
Came many brutes of prey, their several hates
Laid by until the sharing of the spoil.
Just as they gathered stomach for the leap,
The sun was darkened, and wide-balanced wings
Beat downward on the trade-wind from the sea.
A wheel of shadow sped along the fields
And o'er the dreaming cities. Suddenly
My heart misgave me, and I cried aloud,
"Alas! What dost thou here? What dost thou here? "
The great beasts and the little halted sharp,
Eyed the grand circler, doubting his intent.
Straightway the wind flawed and he came about,
Stooping to take the vanward of the pack;
Then turned, between the chasers and the chased,
Crying a word I could not understand,--
But stiller-tongued, with eyes somewhat askance,
They settled to the slot and disappeared.
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101100111 1101010011 01110101010 111101110 0111010101 011010011 011111 0111110100 1001010101 011110111 010110111 1101011111 111001101 0101010101 1101000101 0101010101 11110101 1101111 11110101 10101010101 1101010111 1001010111 1100111100 010111111 1101110101 1101110101 011010111 1111110101 01011101 1101011111 1101010101 1101111101 1101010101 1111010101 0111001101 1101011101 011110101 01001010100 111101101 0111111111 0110010101 101110101 101101101 101101101 1101010001 100111101 1101111101 110101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,015 |
Words | 361 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 48 |
Lines Amount | 48 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,632 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 357 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:49 min read
- 62 Views
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"The Quarry" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 11 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/41970/the-quarry>.
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