Analysis of The Summer Day
Mary Oliver 1935 (Maple Heights, OH) – 2019 (Hobe Sound, FL)
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Scheme | ABCDEFGHIJKGELJMNOP |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101 11010011 11010 11011 01111011101 011110101111 111001101011101 1110011001001001 111010101001001 11101100101 1110101011 1111110101111 0101111001 1111001111101 1111111011 11111111 1010111011 111111111 11110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 830 |
Words | 178 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 19 |
Lines Amount | 19 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 637 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 164 |
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"The Summer Day" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/173568/the-summer-day>.
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