Analysis of Telling Fortunes
Alice Cary 1820 (Mount Healthy) – 1871
‘Be not among wine-bibbers; among riotous eaters of
flesh; for the drunkard and the glutton shall come to
poverty; and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags.’
Proverbs, 23: 20, 21
I’ll tell you two fortunes, my fine little lad,
For you to accept or refuse.
The one of them good, and the other one bad;
Now hear them, and say which you choose!
I see by my gift, within reach of your hand,
A fortune right fair to behold;
A house and a hundred good acres of land,
With harvest fields yellow as gold.
I see a great orchard, the boughs hanging down
With apples of russet and red;
I see droves of cattle, some white and brown,
But all of them sleek and well-fed.
I see doves and swallows about the barn doors,
See the fanning-mill whirling so fast,
See men that are threshing the wheat on the floors;
And now the bright picture is past!
And I see, rising dismally up in the place
Of the beautiful house and the land,
A man with a fire-red nose on his face,
And a little brown jug in his hand!
Oh! if you beheld him, my lad, you would wish
That he were less wretched to see;
For his boot-toes, they gape like the mouth of a fish,
And his trousers are out at the knee!
In walking he staggers, now this way, now that,
And his eyes they stand out like a bug’s,
And he wears an old coat and a battered-in hat,
And I think that the fault is the jug’s!
For our text says the drunkard shall come to be poor,
And drowsiness clothes men with rags;
And he doesn’t look much like a man, I am sure,
Who has honest hard cash in his bags.
Now which will you choose? to be thrifty and snug,
And to be right side up with your dish;
Or to go with your eyes like the eyes of a bug,
And your shoes like the mouth of a fish!
Scheme | XXAX BCBC DEDE FGFG HIHI JDJD KLKL MNMN XAXA OKOK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (90%) Tetractys (23%) |
Metre | 11011101100101 11010001111 1000100110111 10 11111011101 11101101 01111001011 11101111 11111011111 01011101 01001011011 11011011 11011001101 11011001 1111101101 11111011 11101001011 101011011 1111101101 01011011 011101001001 101001001 01101011111 001011011 1111111111 11011011 111111101101 011011101 01011011111 011111101 011111001001 011101101 1101101011111 01001111 01111101111 111011011 11111111001 011111111 111111101101 011101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,781 |
Words | 341 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 129 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 34 |
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"Telling Fortunes" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/53954/telling-fortunes>.
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