Analysis of The Heart

Georg Trakl 1887 (Salzburg) – 1914 (Kraków)



The wild heart grew white in the forest;
Dark anxiety
Of death, as when the gold
Died in the grey cloud.
An evening in November.
A crowd of needy women stood at the bare gate
Of the slaughterhouse;
Rotten meat and guts fell
Into every basket;
Horrible food.
The blue dove of the evening
Brought no forgiveness.
The dark cry of trumpets
Tr a v e l l e d i n t h e golden branches
Of the soaked elms,
A frayed flag
Smoking with blood,
To w h i c h a m a n l i s t e n s
In wild despair.
All your days of nobility, buried
In that red evening!
Out of the dark entrance hall
The golden shape
Of the young girl steps
Surrounded by the pale moon,
The prince’s court of autumn,
Black fir trees broken
In the night’s storm,
The steep fortress.
O heart
Glittering above in the snowy cold


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTKUVWXYZ1 L2 C
Poetic Form
Metre 011110010 10100 111101 10011 1100010 011101011011 1010 101011 0110010 1001 0111010 11010 011110 10111111111111010 1011 011 1011 1100111101011111111 0101 1111010010 01110 1101101 0101 10111 0101011 0101110 11110 0011 0110 11 1000100101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 792
Words 164
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 31
Lines Amount 31
Letters per line (avg) 20
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 605
Words per stanza (avg) 160
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 24, 2023

49 sec read
32

Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists. more…

All Georg Trakl poems | Georg Trakl Books

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