Analysis of Butterfly Laughter

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



In the middle of our porridge plates
There was a blue butterfly painted
And each morning we tried who should reach the
          butterfly first.
Then the Grandmother said:  "Do not eat the poor
          butterfly."
That made us laugh.
Always she said it and always it started us laughing.
It seemed such a sweet little joke.
I was certain that one fine morning
The butterfly would fly out of our plates,
Laughing the teeniest laugh in the world,
And perch on the Grandmother's lap.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIHAJK
Poetic Form
Metre 0010110101 11011010 0110111110 101 1010111101 10 1111 111101110110 11101101 111011110 0101111101 10011001 0110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 479
Words 86
Sentences 7
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 13
Lines Amount 13
Letters per line (avg) 28
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 368
Words per stanza (avg) 84
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 16, 2023

25 sec read
556

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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