Analysis of My Ship and I

Robert Louis Stevenson 1850 (Edinburgh) – 1894 (Vailima, Samoa)



O it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,
Of a ship that goes a sailing on the pond;
And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about;
But when I'm a little older, I shall find the secret out
How to send my vessel sailing on beyond.

For I mean to grow a little as the dolly at the helm,
And the dolly I intend to come alive;
And with him beside to help me, it's a-sailing I shall go,
It's a-sailing on the water, when the jolly breezes blow
And the vessel goes a dive-dive-dive.

O it's then you'll see me sailing through the rushes and the reeds,
And you'll hear the water singing at the prow;
For beside the dolly sailor, I'm to voyage and explore,
To land upon the island where no dolly was before,
And to fire the penny cannon in the bow.


Scheme XABBA XCDDC XEFFE
Poetic Form
Metre 111110101010101 10111010101 011110101010101 111010101110101 11111010101 111110101010101 00101011101 011011111010111 101010101010101 001010111 111111101010001 01101010101 101010101110001 11010101110101 011001010001
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 766
Words 155
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 5, 5, 5
Lines Amount 15
Letters per line (avg) 38
Words per line (avg) 10
Letters per stanza (avg) 192
Words per stanza (avg) 51
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

48 sec read
252

Robert Louis Stevenson

Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist, and travel writer. more…

All Robert Louis Stevenson poems | Robert Louis Stevenson Books

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