The Man with the Wooden Leg

Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)



There was a man lived quite near us;
He had a wooden leg and a goldfinch in a green cage.
His name was Farkey Anderson,
And he'd been in a war to get his leg.
We were very sad about him,
Because he had such a beautiful smile
And was such a big man to live in a very small house.
When he walked on the road his leg did not matter
          so much;
But when he walked in his little house
It made an ugly noise.
Little Brother said his goldfinch sang the loudest of
          all birds,
So that he should not hear his poor leg
And feel too sorry about it.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 01, 2023

34 sec read
212

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGHIGJKLDM
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 547
Words 115
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 15

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. more…

All Katherine Mansfield poems | Katherine Mansfield Books

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