Analysis of The Barn
Edward Thomas 1878 (London Borough of Lambeth) – 1917 (Pas-de-Calais)
They should never have built a barn there, at all -
Drip, drip, drip! - under that elm tree,
Though when it was young. Now it is old
But good, not like the barn and me.
To-morrow they cut it down. They will leave
The barn, as I shall be left, maybe.
What holds it up? 'Twould not pay to pull down.
Well, this place has no other antiquity.
No abbey or castle looks so old
As this that Job Knight built in '54,
Built to keep corn for rats and men.
Now there's fowls in the roof, pigs on the floor.
What thatch survives is dung for the grass,
The best grass on the farm. A pity the roof
Will not bear a mower to mow it. But
Only fowls have foothold enough.
Starlings used to sit there with bubbling throats
Making a spiky beard as they chattered
And whistled and kissed, with heads in air,
Till they thought of something else that mattered.
But now they cannot find a place,
Among all those holes, for a nest any more.
It's the turn of lesser things, I suppose.
Once I fancied 'twas starlings they built it for.
Scheme | XABA XAXA BXXC XXXX XBXX XCXC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (67%) |
Metre | 11101101111 11110111 111111111 11110101 1101111111 011111110 1111111111 11111100100 110110111 1111110 11111101 1110011101 110111101 01110101001 1110101111 1011101 1111111001 100101111 010011101 1111101110 11110101 01111101101 1011101101 1110111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 993 |
Words | 200 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 128 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 24, 2023
- 1:00 min read
- 124 Views
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"The Barn" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9878/the-barn>.
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