Analysis of The House Of Dust: Part 01: 08: The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city

Conrad Potter Aiken 1889 (Savannah, Georgia) – 1973 (Savannah, Georgia)



The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city,
Over the pale grey tumbled towers,—
And settles among the roofs, the pale grey walls.
Along damp sinuous streets it crawls,
Curls like a dream among the motionless trees
And seems to freeze.

The fog slips ghostlike into a thousand rooms,
Whirls over sleeping faces,
Spins in an atomy dance round misty street lamps;
And blows in cloudy waves over open spaces . . .

And one from his high window, looking down,
Peers at the cloud-white town,
And thinks its island towers are like a dream . . .
It seems an enormous sleeper, within whose brain
Laborious shadows revolve and break and gleam.


Scheme XXAABB XCXC DDEXE
Poetic Form
Metre 0111101110010 100111010 01001010111 01110111 11010101001 0111 0111010101 1101010 1011111011 010101101010 0111110101 110111 01110101101 111010100111 01001010101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 637
Words 113
Sentences 10
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 6, 4, 5
Lines Amount 15
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 168
Words per stanza (avg) 39
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

33 sec read
82

Conrad Potter Aiken

Conrad Potter Aiken was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author born in Savannah Georgia whose work includes poetry short stories novels and an autobiography more…

All Conrad Potter Aiken poems | Conrad Potter Aiken Books

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    "The House Of Dust: Part 01: 08: The white fog creeps from the cold sea over the city" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/7054/the-house-of-dust%3A-part-01%3A-08%3A-the-white-fog-creeps-from-the-cold-sea-over-the-city>.

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