Analysis of The Ruined Cottage
Letitia Elizabeth Landon 1802 (Chelsea) – 1838 (Cape Coast)
None will dwell in that cottage; for, they say
Oppression reft it from an honest man,
And that a curse clings to it. Hence the vine
Trails its green weight of leaves upon the ground;
Hence weeds are in the garden; hence the hedge,
Once sweet with honey suckle, is half-dead;
And hence the gray moss on the apple tree.
One once dwelt there, who, in his youth,
Had been a soldier; and, when many days
Had passed, he sought his native village,
And sat down, to end his days in peace.
He had one child, a little laughing thing,
Whose dark eyes, he said, were like her mother's,
She had left buried in a strange land.
And time went on in comfort and content;
And that fair girl had grown far taller
Than the red-rose tree, her father planted
On her first English birth-day. He had trained it
Against an ash, till it became his pride,
It was so rich in blossom and in beauty.
It was called the tree of Isabel. 'Twas an appeal
To all the finer feelings of the heart
To mark their quiet happiness; their home,
In truth, the house of love; and, more than all,
To see them on the Sabbath, when they came,
Among the first, to church. And Isabel,
With her bright colour and her clear blue eyes,
Bowed down so meekly in the house of prayer;
And, in the hymn, her sweet voice audible.
Her father looked so fond of her, and then,
From her looked up so thankfully to heaven.
Then their small cottage was so very neat,
Their garden filled with fruits and flowers and herbs;
And in the winter there was no fireside
So cheerful as their own.
But other days
And other fortunes came - and evil power;
They bore against it cheerfully, and hoped
For better times; but ruin came at last,
And the old soldier left his dear home,
And left it for a prison. 'Twas in June,
One of June's brightest days; the bee, the bird,
The butterfly, were on their lightest wings;
The fruits had their first tinge of summer light;
The sunny sky, the very leaves seemed glad;
But the old man looked back upon his cottage,
And wept aloud. They hurried him away,
And the dear child, that would not leave his side!
They led him from the sight of the blue heaven
And the green grass, into a low dark cell,
The windows shutting out the blessed sun
With iron grating; and, for the first time,
He threw him on the bed, and could not hear
His Isabel's good night.
But the next morn
She was the earliest at the prison gate,
The last on whom it closed, and her sweet voice
And sweeter smile made him forget to pine.
She brought him every morning fresh wild flowers,
But every morning he could mark her cheek
Grow paler and more pale, and her low tones
Get fainter and more faint; and a cold dew
Was on the hand he held. One day he saw
The sun shine through the grating of his cell,
Yet Isabel came not. At every sound
His heart-beat took away his breath;
Yet still she came not near him. One sad day
He marked the dull street, through the iron bars,
That shut him from the world. At length,
He saw a coffin carried carelessly along;
And he grew desperate. He forced the bars;
And he stood on the street, free and alone.
He had no aim, no wish for liberty;
He only felt one want - to see the corpse,
That had no mourners. When they set it down,
Ere it was lowered into the new-dug grave,
A rush of passion came upon his soul;
He tore off the lid, and saw the face
Of Isabel, and knew he had no child.
He lay down by the coffin quietly -
His heart was broken!
Scheme | Text too long |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110110111 0101111101 0101111101 1111110101 1110010101 1111010111 0101110101 11111011 1101001101 111111010 011111101 1111010101 1111101010 111100011 0111010010 011111110 1011101010 10110111111 0111110111 11110100010 111011101101 1101010101 1111010011 0101110111 1111010111 010111010 101100111 1111000111 0001011100 0101111001 10111100110 1111011101 11011101001 0001011110 110111 1101 01010101010 1101110001 1101110111 001101111 0111010101 1111010101 010011101 0111111101 0101010111 10111101110 0101110101 0011111111 11110110110 0011010111 010101011 1101001011 1111010111 1111 1011 11010010101 0111110011 0101110111 111100101110 11001011101 110110011 1100110011 1101111111 0111010111 1101111001 11110111 1111111111 1101110101 11110111 110101010001 011101101 0111011001 1111111100 1101111101 1111011111 11110010111 0111010111 111010101 110011111 1111010100 11110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 3,335 |
Words | 661 |
Sentences | 26 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 81 |
Lines Amount | 81 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 2,621 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 659 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 03, 2023
- 3:19 min read
- 68 Views
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"The Ruined Cottage" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 23 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/25725/the-ruined-cottage>.
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