Analysis of Animal House
Cicely Fox Smith 1882 (Lymm, Cheshire) – 1954 (Bow, Devon)
In Animal House (by which title I call
A dwelling whose true name is not that at all)
There are dogs on the sofas and cats on the chairs;
Wherever you sit you get covered with hairs;
While your progress is marked by the yelps and miaous*
Of beasts you have walked on in Animal House.
There’s an Old English bantam that welcomes the dawn,
There’s a cat that sings love-songs all night on the lawn,
There’s a bachelor turtle-dove making sweet moan
And a puppy lamenting because it’s alone;
The rowdiest tavern where topers carouse
Is a meeting of Quakers to Animal House.
There’s a tortoise asleep in the strawberry bed
(They say it’s asleep but it smells a bit dead);
There are rabbits — they tell me they pluck them alive —
And ferrets in hutches and bees in a hive,
And goats, male and female, that merrily browse
On the stockings they hang out at Animal House.
There’s a little green parrot like old Uncle Ned
Without any feathers on the top of its head,
He’s eighty years old and he’s just laid an egg;
There’s a toad and a newt and a thrush with one leg,
A hedgehog, an owl and a Japanese mouse,
But . . . people are nowhere at Animal House.
Scheme | AABBBC DDEEFC GGHHFC GGIICC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 01001111011 01011111111 111101001101 01011111011 1111110101 11111101001 111101011001 101111111101 101001011011 001001001101 01101101 101011011001 10100100101 11101111011 111011111101 0100101001 0110111001 101011111001 101011011101 011010101111 11011011111 101001001111 011100011 1101111001 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,154 |
Words | 217 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 37 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 222 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 55 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:05 min read
- 112 Views
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"Animal House" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/42744/animal-house>.
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