Analysis of THE MIDNIGHT HOWLER
Phil Roberts 1957 (Melbourne)
The midnight howler’s shrieking
With a strange, loathsome delight,
He’s shrieking for the homeless folk
Whose life is just a blight.
He’s shrieking with delight
For all the hopelessness he sees,
The sad and lonely losers
Whose whole life’s sheer misery.
The howler spreads despair
Around a malignant town,
Howling with delight as
The mighty come tumbling down.
The howler is a misery-guts
He feeds on suffering and pain,
His howling in delight is
A loser’s last refrain.
The howler’s like a banshee but
His shrieking is in delight,
Street people huddle around braziers
Aquiver in morbid fright:
They’re frightened of the howler
And all the pain he brings,
Suffering, hurt, and death
As this ghoulish chorister sings:
He sings of death and loneliness
And the failure of every kind,
The loss of life’s a luxury
To those the howler finds:
He finds his prey in thickets
No covers to hide their heads,
He sings a lullaby of death
And by finishing they’re dead!
THE END
© Copyright 2021 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Scheme | XAXA AXBC XDXD EFXF XABA XGHG XXCX EXHX XXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110 1011001 11010101 111101 110101 11010011 0101010 1111100 010101 0100101 101011 01011001 010101001 11110001 1100011 010101 0110011 1101001 110100110 10101 1101010 010111 100101 111011 11110100 001011001 01110100 110101 1111010 1101111 1101011 0110011 01 101010 100100010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,011 |
Words | 174 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 3 |
Lines Amount | 35 |
Letters per line (avg) | 23 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 91 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 19 |
About this poem
Horror poem about a creature that howls in delight at pain and suffering, and can "sing" people to death.
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Written on October 05, 2011
Submitted by PHIL_ROBERTS on June 17, 2021
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 52 sec read
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"THE MIDNIGHT HOWLER" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/102926/the-midnight-howler>.
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