Analysis of Stolen from an evening song
It is a painting by some Chinese scholar
Who does not only write but paints,
Whose script is both text and light,
Color and cry at once.
There, a bird is silent on stilts,
Although its shadow burns
The edge of Xuan.
Or, to represent
An ancient art, those quick blotches
Spelling for us two or three bells,
Repeating a monk’s call for alms.
If we need to fix our artist’s hut --
Where he had been taught to write --
We must observe him draw
The characters for home.
Is there a window,
A hint of a door, his mother patiently
Taking his hands and pressing
Flesh to paper?
In the painting too should be evenings
Of the artist as a boy,
Leaning his head
Toward his mother’s lips
While she whispers
About black flies buzzing
Or the burnt leaves of Chinese fir.
There, her hands on paper
Steady his eyes and ears;
But always it teaches him
How to unlatch a door, a window,
By pointing his brush strokes home.
Centuries later, we are still
Wondering how that bird
Could stay so silent; or why
A cricket needs to teach another --
Two strokes of the stylus
Just about right -- a dozen notes
Stolen from an evening song?
Scheme | AXBX XXXXXXX XBXCD XEA XXXXXEA AXXDC XXXAXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010110110 11110111 1111101 100111 10111011 1111 0111 1101 11011110 10111111 01001111 1111110101 1111111 110111 010011 11010 01101110100 1011010 1110 001011110 1010101 1011 011101 1110 011110 10111011 101110 101101 111101 11101010 1101111 10010111 100111 1111011 010111010 111010 10110101 1011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,078 |
Words | 211 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 7, 5, 3, 7, 5, 7 |
Lines Amount | 38 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 123 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 30 |
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Submitted on May 02, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:03 min read
- 1 View
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"Stolen from an evening song" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/85142/stolen-from-an-evening-song>.
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