Analysis of Etching

William Ernest Henley 1849 (Gloucester) – 1903 (Woking)



Two and thirty is the ploughman.
He's a man of gallant inches,
And his hair is close and curly,
And his beard;
But his face is wan and sunken,
And his eyes are large and brilliant,
And his shoulder-blades are sharp,
And his knees.

He is weak of wits, religious,
Full of sentiment and yearning,
Gentle, faded-with a cough
And a snore.
When his wife (who was a widow,
And is many years his elder)
Fails to write, and that is always,
He desponds.

Let his melancholy wander,
And he'll tell you pretty stories
Of the women that have wooed him
Long ago;
Or he'll sing of bonnie lasses
Keeping sheep among the heather,
With a crackling, hackling click
In his voice.


Scheme ABXXAXXC XXXXDEXB ECXDBEXX
Poetic Form
Metre 1010101 10111010 01111010 011 11111010 01111010 0110111 011 11111010 11100010 1010101 001 11111010 01101110 1110111 11 1110010 01111010 10101111 101 1111101 10101010 101011 011
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 643
Words 124
Sentences 6
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 21
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 169
Words per stanza (avg) 41
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

38 sec read
54

William Ernest Henley

William Ernest Henley was an English poet, critic and editor, best remembered for his 1875 poem "Invictus". more…

All William Ernest Henley poems | William Ernest Henley Books

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