Analysis of The Best Pipe
Robert Fuller Murray 1863 – 1894
In vain you fervently extol,
In vain you puff, your cutty clay.
A twelvemonth smoked and black as coal,
'Tis redolent of rank decay
And bones of monks long passed away—
A fragrance I do not admire;
And so I hold my nose and say,
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
Macleod, whose judgment on the whole
Is faultless, has been led astray
To nurse a high-born meerschaum bowl,
For which he sweetly had to pay.
Ah, let him nurse it as he may,
Before the colour mounts much higher,
The grate shall be its fate one day.
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
The heathen Turk of Istamboul,
In oriental turban gay,
Delights his unbelieving soul
With hookahs, bubbling in a way
To fill a Christian with dismay
And wake the old Crusading fire.
May no such pipe be mine, I pray;
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
Clay, meerschaum, hookah, what are they
That I should view them with desire?
Both now, and when my hair is grey,
Give me a finely seasoned briar.
Scheme | ababbxbC ababbcbC ababbcbC bcbC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01110001 01111101 0110111 11001101 01111101 01011101 01111101 110101010 01110101 1111101 1101111 11110111 11111111 01011110 01111111 110101010 010111 0010101 0110101 11100001 11010101 010101010 11111111 110101010 111111 111111010 11011111 110101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 921 |
Words | 178 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 183 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 44 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 53 sec read
- 102 Views
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