Analysis of An Old Man's Winter Night
Robert Frost 1874 (San Francisco) – 1963 (Boston)
All out of doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss.
And having scared the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it once again
In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to no one but himself
Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what,
A quiet light, and then not even that.
He consigned to the moon, such as she was,
So late-arising, to the broken moon
As better than the sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.
Scheme | ABCDEFGHAIJKLMNOPFQRSTUVWXYJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111110011 101110101 1101010101 1111110101 1011011011 11110100111 1111110111 1111011101 0101010101 011111101 011010101 1111010101 1101110101 1101110101 0111111101 1111011111 0101011101 1011011111 1101010101 1101010101 1101110101 1100010111 0101110101 10010110110 0111010111 111111101 010101111 1111110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,179 |
Words | 239 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 28 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 917 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 237 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 05, 2023
- 1:12 min read
- 250 Views
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