Analysis of How Jack Made The Giants Uncommonly Sore
Guy Wetmore Carryl 1873 (New York City) – 1904 (New York City)
Of all the ill-fated
Boys ever created
Young Jack was the wretchedest lad:
An emphatic, erratic,
Dogmatic fanatic
Was foisted upon him as dad!
From the time he could walk,
And before he could talk,
His wearisome training began,
On a highly barbarian,
Disciplinarian,
Nearly Tartarean
Plan!
He taught him some Raleigh,
And some of Macaulay,
Till all of "Horatius" he knew,
And the drastic, sarcastic,
Fantastic, scholastic
Philippics of "Junius," too.
He made him learn lots
Of the poems of Watts,
And frequently said he ignored,
On principle, any son's
Title to benisons
Till he'd learned Tennyson's
"Maud."
"For these are the giants
Of thought and of science,"
He said in his positive way:
"So weigh them, obey them,
Display them, and lay them
To heart in your infancy's day!"
Jack made no reply,
But he said on the sly
An eloquent word, that had come
From a quite indefensible,
Most reprehensible,
But indispensable
Chum.
By the time he was twenty
Jack had such a plenty
Of books and paternal advice,
Though seedy and needy,
Indeed he was greedy
For vengeance, whatever the price!
In the editor's seat
Of a critical sheet
He found the revenge that he sought;
And, with sterling appliance of
Mind, wrote defiance of
All of the giants of
Thought.
He'd thunder and grumble
At high and at humble
Until he became, in a while,
Mordacious, pugnacious,
Rapacious. Good gracious!
They called him the Yankee Carlyle!
But he never took rest
On his quarrelsome quest
Of the giants, both mighty and small.
He slated, distorted them,
Hanged them and quartered them,
Till he had slaughtered them
All.
And this is The Moral that lies in the verse:
If you have a go farther, you're apt to fare worse.
(When you turn it around it is different rather:--
You're not apt to go worse if you have a fair father!)
Scheme | XXABBACCDEEDD FFGBBGHHXXHHX XXIJJIKKLMMML FFNFFNOOPQQQP MMRXXRSSTJJJT UUVV |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110110 110010 111011 1010010 010010 11001111 101111 001111 11001001 10100100 00100 101 1 111110 011010 11101011 0010010 010010 111001 11111 101011 01001101 1100101 1011 1111 1 111010 110110 11011001 111011 011011 110111 11101 111101 11001111 10100100 10100 10100 1 1011110 111010 11001001 110010 011110 1101001 001001 101001 11001111 01100101 110101 110101 1 110010 110110 01101001 1010 010110 1110101 111011 111001 101011001 1100101 11011 111101 1 01101011001 111011011111 1111011110010 1111111110110 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,741 |
Words | 326 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 13, 13, 13, 13, 13, 4 |
Lines Amount | 69 |
Letters per line (avg) | 20 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 233 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 52 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:39 min read
- 11 Views
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"How Jack Made The Giants Uncommonly Sore" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 26 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/55467/how-jack-made-the-giants-uncommonly-sore>.
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