Analysis of The Fairies
William Allingham 1824 (Ballyshannon) – 1889 (Hampstead)
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!
Down along the rocky shore
Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain lake,
With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.
High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and gray
He's nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
Or going up with music
On cold starry nights
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lake,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
Watching till she wake.
By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and there.
If any man so daring
As dig them up in spite,
He shall find their sharpest thorns
In his bed at night.
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl's feather!
Scheme | ABCBDEFE xghgxixi xjxjxxkhxlxl xxbxxmxmxixi xnkncoxo ABCBDEFE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101010 1011 11011010 111101 1111 101010 11011 01110 1010101 1111 111101 11011 1001 101101 111111 1101 11011 0111 1111101 11111 101111 1110 111010 1111 1101110 11101 11101 101101 111010 11011 111101 01011 110101 0101010 11111101 1111110 1110101 10101 101111 10111 101011 10101 111011 110101 1101110 111101 1111101 01111 101010 1011 11011010 111101 1111 101010 11011 01110 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,438 |
Words | 255 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 12, 12, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 56 |
Letters per line (avg) | 19 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 181 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:18 min read
- 767 Views
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"The Fairies" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39024/the-fairies>.
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