Analysis of My Grave.
Thomas Osborne Davis 1814 (Mallow, County Cork) – 1845 (Dublin)
Shall they bury me in the deep,
Where wind-forgetting waters sleep?
Shall they dig a grave for me,
Under the green-wood tree?
Or on the wild heath,
Where the wilder breath
Of the storm doth blow?
Oh, no! oh, no!
Shall they bury me in the Palace Tombs,
Or under the shade of Cathedral domes?
Sweet 'twere to lie on Italy's shore;
Yet not there--nor in Greece, though I love it more,
In the wolf or the vulture my grave shall I find?
Shall my ashes career on the world-seeing wind?
Shall they fling my corpse in the battle mound,
Where coffinless thousands lie under the ground?
Just as they fall they are buried so--
Oh, no! oh, no!
No! on an Irish green hill-side,
On an opening lawn--but not too wide;
For I love the drip of the wetted trees--
I love not the gales, but a gentle breeze
To freshen the turf--put no tombstone there,
But green sods decked with daisies fair;
Nor sods too deep, but so that the dew,
The matted grass-roots may trickle through.
Be my epitaph writ on my country's mind,
"HE SERVED HIS COUNTRY, AND LOVED HIS KIND."
Oh! 'twere merry unto the grave to go,
If one were sure to be buried so.
Scheme | aabbxxcC xxddeeffcC gghhiijjee cc |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (40%) Tetractys (27%) |
Metre | 11101001 11010101 1110111 100111 11011 10101 10111 1111 1110100101 1100110101 111111001 11110111111 001101011111 111001101101 1111100101 111011001 111111101 1111 11110111 1110011111 111011011 1110110101 110011111 11111101 111111101 01111101 1110111101 111100111 1110100111 110111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,095 |
Words | 215 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 10, 10, 2 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 212 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 53 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:04 min read
- 4 Views
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"My Grave." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/56806/my-grave.>.
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