Analysis of A New Song about the Sea.

Edward Shanks 1892 (London) – 1953



From Amberley to Storrington,
From Storrington to Amberley,
From Amberley to Washington
You cannot see or smell the sea.
But why the devil should you wish
To see the home of silly fish?

Since I prefer the earth and air,
The fish may wallow in the sea
And live the life that they prefer,
If they will leave the land to me,
So wish for each what he may wish,
The earth for me, the sea for fish.
  


Scheme AXABCC XBXBCC
Poetic Form
Metre 1111 1111 111100 11011101 11010111 11011101 11010101 01110001 01011101 11110111 11111111 01110111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 386
Words 79
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 6, 6
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 153
Words per stanza (avg) 39
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

23 sec read
20

Edward Shanks

Edward Richard Buxton Shanks was an English writer, known as a war poet of World War I, then as an academic and journalist, and literary critic and biographer. He also wrote some science fiction. He was born in London, and educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He passed his B.A. in History in 1913. He was editor of Granta from 1912-13. He served in World War I with the British Army in France, but was invalided out in 1915, and did administrative work until war's end. He was later a literary reviewer, working for the London Mercury and for a short while a lecturer at the University of Liverpool. He was the chief leader-writer for the Evening Standard from 1928 to 1935. The People of the Ruins was a science-fiction novel in which a man wakes after being put into suspended animation, to discover a devastated Britain. more…

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