Analysis of Tasting the Earth
James Oppenheim 1882 – 1932 (New York City)
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.
As I lay on my couch in the muffled night, and the rain lashed at my window,
And my forsaken heart would give me no rest, no pause and no peace,
Though I turned my face far from the wailing of my bereavement...
Then I said: I will eat of this sorrow to its last shred,
I will take it unto me utterly,
I will see if I be not strong enough to contain it...
What do I fear? Discomfort?
How can it hurt me, this bitterness?
The miracle, then!
Turning toward it, and giving up to it,
I found it deeper than my own self...
O dark great mother-globe so close beneath me...
It was she with her inexhaustable grief,
Ages of blood-drenched jungles, and the smoking of craters, and the roar of tempests,
And moan of the forsaken seas,
It was she with the hills beginning to walk in the shapes of the dark-hearted animals,
It was she risen, dashing away tears and praying to dumb skies, in the pomp-crumbling tragedy of man...
It was she, container of all griefs, and the buried dust of broken hearts,
Cry of the christs and the lovers and the child-stripped mothers,
And ambition gone down to defeat, and the battle overborne,
And the dreams that have no waking...
My heart became her ancient heart:
On the food of the strong I fed, on dark strange life itself:
Wisdom-giving and sombre with the unremitting love of ages...
There was dank soil in my mouth,
And bitter sea on my lips,
In a dark hour, tasting the Earth.
Scheme | A xbxxcdxx edfcxbxxxxxex xfx xxA |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 001101001 1111110010100111110 0101011111111011 111111101011010 11111111101111 1111101100 11111111011011 1111010 111111100 01001 10011010111 111101111 11110111011 1111011 1011110001011000111 01100101 1111010101100110110100 111101001101011100110010011 111010111001011101 11010010001110 00101110100101 00111110 11010101 10110111111101 101001100101110 1111011 0101111 001101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,415 |
Words | 272 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 8, 13, 3, 3 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 40 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 221 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 54 |
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"Tasting the Earth" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/53942/tasting-the-earth>.
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