Analysis of The
Robert Graves 1895 (Wimbledon) – 1985 (Deià)
One moonlit night a ship drove in,
A ghost ship from the west,
Drifting with bare mast and lone tiller,
Like a mermaid drest
In long green weed and barnacles:
She beached and came to rest.
All the watchers of the coast
Flocked to view the sight,
Men and women streaming down
Through the summer night,
Found her standing tall and ragged
Beached in the moonlight.
Then one old woman looked and wept
'The 'Alice Jean'? But no!
The ship that took my Dick from me
Sixty years ago
Drifted back from the utmost west
With the ocean's flow?
'Caught and caged in the weedy pool
Beyond the western brink,
Where crewless vessels lie and rot
in waters black as ink.
Torn out again by a sudden storm
Is it the 'Jean', you think?'
A hundred women stared agape,
The menfolk nudged and laughed,
But none could find a likelier story
For the strange craft.
With fear and death and desolation
Rigged fore and aft.
The blind ship came forgotten home
To all but one of these
Of whom none dared to climb aboard her:
And by and by the breeze
Sprang to a storm and the 'Alice Jean'
Foundered in frothy seas.
Scheme | XABAXA XCXCXC XDEDAD XFXFXF XGEGXG XHBHXH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1110110 011101 101110110 1011 01110100 110111 1010101 11101 1010101 10101 10101010 1001 11110101 010111 01111111 10101 1011011 10101 10100101 010101 1110101 010111 110110101 110111 01010101 01101 1111010010 1011 11010010 1101 01110101 111111 111111010 010101 110100101 100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 1,055 |
Words | 206 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 142 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 34 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 02, 2023
- 1:01 min read
- 115 Views
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"The" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31171/the>.
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