Across the Red Sky
Across the red sky two birds flying,Flying with drooping wings.Silent and solitary their ominous flight.All day the triumphant sun with yellow bannersWarred and warred with the earth, and when she yieldedStabbed her heart, gathered her blood in a chalice,Spilling it over the evening sky.When the dark plumaged birds go flying, flying,Quiet lies the earth wrapt in her mournful shadow,Her sightless eyes turned to the red skyAnd the restlessly seeking birds.
Words in this poem
- chalice n.
- A cup or bowl; especially, the cup used in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. [OR. chalis, calice, OF. chalice, calice, F. calice, fr. L. calix, akin to Gr. helmet. Cf. Calice, Calyx.]
- sightless a.
- Wanting sight; without sight; blind.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Across the Red Sky is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59276; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Katherine Mansfield, Across the Red Sky, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59276, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mansfield-poems/across-the-red-sky.html, id L27583.
Form and metre
Across the Red Sky is 11 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%).
See other poems in trochaic hexameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 A-----BA-B- flyingA · wings · flight · banners · yielded · chalice · skyB · flyingA · shadow · skyB · birds
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Across the red sky two birds flying, | 9 | ˘/·····/˘ |
| Flying with drooping wings. | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| Silent and solitary their ominous flight. | 11 | /˘·/˘·˘·/˘· |
| All day the triumphant sun with yellow banners | 12 | ···˘/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Warred and warred with the earth, and when she yielded | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Stabbed her heart, gathered her blood in a chalice, | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
| Spilling it over the evening sky. | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| When the dark plumaged birds go flying, flying, | 11 | ···/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Quiet lies the earth wrapt in her mournful shadow, | 11 | /······/˘/· |
| Her sightless eyes turned to the red sky | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| And the restlessly seeking birds. | 8 | ··/˘˘/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.