Analysis of The Drunkard's Funeral
Vachel Lindsay 1879 (Springfield) – 1931 (Springfield)
"Yes," said the sister with the little pinched face,
The busy little sister with the funny little tract: —
"This is the climax, the grand fifth act.
There rides the proud, at the finish of his race.
There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,
The respectable hearse goes slowly by.
The wife of the dead has money in her purse,
The children are in health, so it might have been worse.
That fellow in the coffin led a life most foul.
A fierce defender of the red bar-tender,
At the church he would rail,
At the preacher he would howl.
He planted every deviltry to see it grow.
He wasted half his income on the lewd and the low.
He would trade engender for the red bar-tender,
He would homage render to the red bar-tender,
And in ultimate surrender to the red bar-tender,
He died of the tremens, as crazy as a loon,
And his friends were glad, when the end came soon.
There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,
The respectable hearse goes slowly by.
And now, good friends, since you see how it ends,
Let each nation-mender flay the red bar-tender, —
Abhor
The transgression
Of the red bar-tender, —
Ruin
The profession
Of the red bar-tender:
Force him into business where his work does good.
Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood,
Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood.
"The moral,
The conclusion,
The verdict now you know:—
'The saloon must go,
The saloon must go,
The saloon,
The saloon,
The saloon,
Must go.'"
"You are right, little sister," I said to myself,
"You are right, good sister," I said.
"Though you wear a mussy bonnet
On your little gray head,
You are right, little sister," I said.
Scheme | abbaCCddefxeggfffhhCCxfxiFiiFjJJ xigGGHHHg xkxkk |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11010101011 01010101010101 11010111 11011010111 11010101 0010011101 01101110001 010101111111 110001010111 01010101110 101111 1010111 11010011111 110111101001 111010101110 111010101110 00100010101110 111010110101 0110110111 11010101 0010011101 0111111111 11101101110 01 0010 101110 10 0010 101110 11011011111 111111111111 111111111111 010 0010 010111 00111 00111 001 001 001 11 11110101111 11111011 1110110 111011 111101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,595 |
Words | 309 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 32, 9, 5 |
Lines Amount | 46 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 413 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 100 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:31 min read
- 77 Views
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