Analysis of Little Ditties I
William Brighty Rands 1823 (Chelsea, Middlesex) – 1882 (East Dulwich, London)
Winifred Waters sat and sighed
Under a weeping willow;
When she went to bed she cried,
Wetting all the pillow;
Kept on crying night and day,
Till her friends lost patience;
"What shall we do to stop her, pray?"
So said her relations.
Send her to the sandy plains,
In the zone called torrid:
Send her where it never rains,
Where the heat is horrid.
Mind that she has only flour
For her daily feeding;
Let her have a page an hour
Of the driest reading,--
Navigation, logarithm,
All that kind of knowledge,--
Ancient pedigrees go with 'em,
From the Heralds' College.
When the poor girl has endured
Six months of this drying,
Winifred will come back cured,
Let us hope, of crying.
Then she will not day by day
Make those mournful faces,
And we shall not have to say,
"Wring her pillow-cases."
Scheme | ABAB CXCX DEDE FGFG XXXX HGHG CICI |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (71%) |
Metre | 10010101 100101 1111111 101010 1110101 101110 11111101 110010 1010101 001110 1011101 101110 11111010 101010 10101110 101010 1010100 111110 10100111 101010 1011101 111110 1001111 111110 1111111 111010 0111111 101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 795 |
Words | 150 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 87 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 21 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 15, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 76 Views
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"Little Ditties I" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/39221/little-ditties-i>.
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