Analysis of A Question
Ellis Parker Butler 1869 (Muscatine) – 1937 (Williamsville)
Whene’er I feed the barnyard folk
My gentle soul is vexed;
My sensibilities are torn
And I am sore perplexed.
The rooster so politely stands
While waiting for his food,
But when I feed him, what a change!
He then is rough and rude.
He crowds his gentle wives aside
Or pecks them on the head;
Sometimes I think it would be best
If he were never fed.
And so I often stand for hours
Deciding which is right—
To impolitely have enough,
Or starve and be polite.
| Scheme | XAXA XBXB XCXC XDXD |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | Quatrain |
| Metre | 111011 110111 1010011 011101 01010101 110111 11111101 111101 11110101 111101 01111111 110101 011101110 10111 11101 110101 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 453 |
| Words | 90 |
| Sentences | 6 |
| Stanzas | 4 |
| Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
| Lines Amount | 16 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 22 |
| Words per line (avg) | 6 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 89 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 22 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 27 sec read
- 341 Views
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"A Question" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/11026/a-question>.
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