Analysis of The Ghost of the Murderer's Hut
Andrew Barton Paterson 1864 (Orange, New South Wales) – 1941 (Sydney, New South Wales)
My horse had been lamed in the foot
In the rocks at the back of the run,
So I camped at the Murderer's Hut,
At the place where the murder was done.
The walls were all spattered with gore,
A terrible symbol of guilt;
And the bloodstains were fresh on the floor
Where the blood of the victim was spilt.
The wind hurried past with a shout,
The thunderstorm doubled its din
As I shrank from the danger without,
And recoiled from the horror within.
When lo! at the window a shape,
A creature of infinite dread;
A thing with the face of an ape,
And with eyes like the eyes of the dead.
With the horns of a fiend, and a skin
That was hairy as satyr or elf,
And a long, pointed beard on its chin --
My God! 'twas the Devil himself.
In anguish I sank on the floor,
With terror my features were stiff,
Till the thing gave a kind of a roar,
Ending up with a resonant "Biff!"
Then a cheer burst aloud from my throat,
For the thing that my spirit did vex
Was naught but an elderly goat --
Just a goat of the masculine sex.
When his master was killed he had fled,
And now, by the dingoes bereft,
The nannies were all of them dead,
And only the billy was left.
So we had him brought in on a stage
To the house where, in style, he can strut,
And he lives to a fragrant old age
As the Ghost of the Murderer's Hut.
Scheme | XABA CDCD EFEF GHGH FIFI CJCJ KLKL HMHM NBNB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 11111001 001101101 111101001 101101011 01011011 01001011 00101101 101101011 01101101 0101011 111101001 001101001 11101001 01011001 01101111 011101101 101101001 11101111 001101111 11101001 01011101 11011001 101101101 101101001 101101111 101111011 11111001 101101001 111011111 0110101 01001111 01001011 111110101 101101111 011101011 101101001 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,304 |
Words | 266 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 110 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 29 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:20 min read
- 34 Views
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