Analysis of Talking (and Singing) of the Nordic Man

Hilaire Belloc 1870 (La Celle-Saint-Cloud) – 1953



Behold, my child, the Nordic man,
And be as like him, as you can;
His legs are long, his mind is slow,
His hair is lank and made of tow.

And here we have the Alpine Race:
Oh! What a broad and foolish face!
His skin is of a dirty yellow.
He is a most unpleasant fellow.

The most degraded of them all
Mediterranean we call.
His hair is crisp, and even curls,
And he is saucy with the girls.


Scheme AABB CCBB DDEE
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 01110101 01111111 11111111 11110111 0111011 11010101 111101010 110101010 01010111 0010011 11110101 01110101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 391
Words 85
Sentences 8
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 97
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 13, 2023

25 sec read
418

Hilaire Belloc

Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902, but kept his French citizenship. more…

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