Tower Of Babel

Cicely Fox Smith 1882 (Lymm, Cheshire) – 1954 (Bow, Devon)



Annabel Lee

Is the name on the label,
Reckon it ought to be

Tower of Babel
,

For there ain't a lingo
That's spoke or swore in
From San Domingo
To Tuti-
cor
-in,

From the Pole or near it
To Pernambuker
But what you'll 'ear it
On board this 'ooker.

And I give you my word, in our port watch
There's English and Irish and Welsh and Scotch,
A Finn, a Swede and a Portuguee,
A Frenchy, a Bim and a heathen Chinee,
And a son of a Dutch, son of a Greek,
Son of a n*gger from Martinique.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

31 sec read
95

Quick analysis:

Scheme AX A BCBDEC DEDE FFBCGG
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 467
Words 101
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 2, 2, 6, 4, 6

Cicely Fox Smith

Cicely Fox Smith (1 February 1882 – 8 April 1954) was an English poet and writer. Born in Lymm, Cheshire and educated at Manchester High School for Girls, she briefly lived in Canada, before returning to the United Kingdom shortly before the outbreak of World War I. She settled in Hampshire and began writing poetry, often with a nautical theme. Smith wrote over 600 poems in her life, for a wide range of publications. In later life, she expanded her writing to a number of subjects, fiction and non-fiction. For her services to literature, the British Government awarded her a small pension. more…

All Cicely Fox Smith poems | Cicely Fox Smith Books

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