Analysis of If I Were King
William Ernest Henley 1849 (Gloucester) – 1903 (Woking)
If I were king, my pipe should be premier.
The skies of time and chance are seldom clear,
We would inform them all with bland blue weather.
Delight alone would need to shed a tear,
For dream and deed should war no more together.
Art should aspire, yet ugliness be dear;
Beauty, the shaft, should speed with wit for feather;
And love, sweet love, should never fall to sere,
If I were king.
But politics should find no harbour near;
The Philistine should fear to slip his tether;
Tobacco should be duty free, and beer;
In fact, in room of this, the age of leather,
An age of gold all radiant should appear,
If I were king.
Scheme | aabxb abaC ababaC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1101111101 0111011101 11011111110 0101111101 11011111010 1101110011 10011111110 0111110111 1101 110111101 0101111110 011110101 01011101110 11111100101 1101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 628 |
Words | 119 |
Sentences | 6 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 4, 6 |
Lines Amount | 15 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 160 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 39 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 23, 2023
- 35 sec read
- 74 Views
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