Portrait Of A Barmaid
Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell 1887 (Scarborough) – 1964 (Weedon Lois)
Metallic waves of people jar
Through crackling green toward the bar
Where on the tables chattering-white
The sharp drinks quarrel with the light.
Those coloured muslin blinds the smiles,
Shroud wooden faces in their wiles —
Sometimes they splash like water (you
Yourself reflected in their hue).
The conversation loud and bright
Seems spinal bars of shunting light
In firework-spurting greenery.
O complicate machinery
For building Babel, iron crane
Beneath your hair, that blue-ribbed mane
In noise and murder like the sea
Without its mutability!
Outside the bar where jangling heat
Seems out of tune and off the beat —
A concertina's glycerine
Exudes, and mirrors in the green
Your soul: pure glucose edged with hints
Of tentative and half-soiled tints.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 26, 2023
- 37 sec read
- 58 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AA BB CC DD BB EE FF EB GG FX HH |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 748 |
Words | 123 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2 |
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"Portrait Of A Barmaid" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/7418/portrait-of-a-barmaid>.
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