Analysis of A Ballad Of Nursery Rhyme
Robert von Ranke Graves 1895 (Wimbledon, Surrey) – 1985 (Deià, Majorca)
Strawberries that in gardens grow
Are plump and juicy fine,
But sweeter far as wise men know
Spring from the woodland vine.
No need for bowl or silver spoon,
Sugar or spice or cream,
Has the wild berry plucked in June
Beside the trickling stream.
One such to melt at the tongue's root,
Confounding taste with scent,
Beats a full peck of garden fruit:
Which points my argument.
May sudden justice overtake
And snap the froward pen,
That old and palsied poets shake
Against the minds of men;
Blasphemers trusting to hold caught
In far-flung webs of ink
The utmost ends of human thought,
Till nothing's left to think.
But may the gift of heavenly peace
And glory for all time
Keep the boy Tom who tending geese
First made the nursery rhyme.
By the brookside one August day,
Using the sun for clock,
Tom whiled the languid hours away
Beside his scattering flock,
Carving with a sharp pointed stone
On a broad slab of slate
The famous lives of Jumping Joan,
Dan Fox and Greedy Kate;
Rhyming of wolves and bears and birds,
Spain, Scotland, Babylon,
That sister Kate might learn the words
To tell to Toddling John.
But Kate, who could not stay content
To learn her lesson pat,
New beauty to the rough lines lent
By changing this or that;
And she herself set fresh things down
In corners of her slate,
Of lambs and lanes and London Town.
God's blessing fall on Kate!
The baby loved the simple sound,
With jolly glee he shook,
And soon the lines grew smooth and round
Like pebbles in Tom's brook,
From mouth to mouth told and retold
By children sprawled at ease
Before the fire in winter's cold,
In June beneath tall trees;
Till though long lost are stone and slate,
Though the brook no more runs,
And dead long time are Tom, John, Kate,
Their sons and their sons' sons;
Yet, as when Time with stealthy tread
Lays the rich garden waste,
The woodland berry ripe and red
Fails not in scent or taste,
So these same rhymes shall still be told
To children yet unborn,
While false philosophy growing old
Fades and is killed by scorn.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEX GHGH XIXI JKJK LMLM NONO PQPQ FRFR SOSO TUTU EVWV OXOX YZYZ W1 W1 |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (94%) |
Metre | 1010101 110101 11011111 11011 11111101 101111 10110101 010101 11111011 010111 10111101 111100 1101010 01011 1101101 010111 110111 011111 0111101 110111 110111001 010111 10111101 1101001 1011101 100111 110101001 0111001 10101101 101111 01011101 110101 10110101 11010 11011101 111101 11111110 110101 11010111 110111 01011111 010101 11010101 110111 01010101 110111 01011101 110011 1111101 110111 010100101 010111 11111101 101111 01111111 110111 11111101 101101 0110101 110111 11111111 110111 110100101 101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,002 |
Words | 384 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 16 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 64 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 100 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:56 min read
- 10 Views
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"A Ballad Of Nursery Rhyme" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/56547/a-ballad-of-nursery-rhyme>.
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