Analysis of November Surf

Robinson Jeffers 1887 (Allegheny) – 1962 (Carmel-by-the-Sea)



Some lucky day each November great waves awake and are
drawn
Like smoking mountains bright from the west
And come and cover the cliff with white violent cleanness: then
suddenly
The old granite forgets half a year's filth:
The orange-peel, eggshells, papers, pieces of clothing, the clots
Of dung in corners of the rock, and used
Sheaths that make light love safe in the evenings: all the droppings
of the summer
Idlers washed off in a winter ecstasy:
I think this cumbered continent envies its cliff then. . . . But all
seasons
The earth, in her childlike prophetic sleep,
Keeps dreaming of the bath of a storm that prepares up the long
coast
Of the future to scour more than her sea-lines:
The cities gone down, the people fewer and the hawks more
numerous,
The rivers mouth to source pure; when the two-footed
Mammal, being someways one of the nobler animals, regains
The dignity of room, the value of rareness.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJEKLMNOPQRSTU
Poetic Form
Metre 11011010110101 1 110101101 010100111100101 100 0110011011 01011101011001 1101010101 11111100101010 1010 1110010100 1111100111111 10 010010101 110101101101101 1 101011011011 01011010100011 100 010111110110 101011101010001 010011010110
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 901
Words 160
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 22
Lines Amount 22
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 727
Words per stanza (avg) 161
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

48 sec read
55

Robinson Jeffers

John Robinson Jeffers was an American poet, known for his work about the central California coast. more…

All Robinson Jeffers poems | Robinson Jeffers Books

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