Analysis of Jackdaw
Padraic Colum 1881 (County Longford) – 1972 (Enfield)
ALOOF from his tribe
On the elm-tree's top,
A jackdaw perched
A hand-reach up.
Silent he sat
On the branch, nor stirred,
And I saw m him
A changeling bird.
Grass was worn
Round pots and a pan,
A flea-bitten horse,
And a tilted van,
Where tinker's or gypsy's
Brats at play
Made vagrant's game of
Some citizen's way.
I watched the daw
On the branch, beguiled:
I saw a vagrant
From the wild.
The entail broken
What had he?
The humour of one
Out of his degree.
The franchise of one
Without kith or kind,
And only the pauper's
Single mind!
The daws on the elms
Kept tribal speech,
And he perched there,
Within a hand's reach-
He flew; his flight
Neither high nor wide
Was a vagabond's
To a seedman's stride.
A dog on the ground
Was rubbing for fleas;
Rags were there
He fluttered to these:
Held a bright rag up
Like a banner won,
And went and hid it
Behind a stone!
Scheme | XXXA XBXB XCDC DEXE XFXF GHGH GIDI XJKJ XLDL XMKM AGXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (82%) |
Metre | 01111 10111 011 0111 1011 10111 01111 011 111 11001 01101 00101 11011 111 1111 11001 1101 10101 11010 101 00110 111 0111 11101 0111 01111 01001 101 01101 1101 0111 01011 1111 10111 101 1011 01101 11011 101 11011 10111 10101 01011 0101 |
Closest metre | Iambic dimeter |
Characters | 825 |
Words | 168 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 15 |
Words per line (avg) | 4 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 60 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 15 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 25, 2023
- 53 sec read
- 154 Views
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