Analysis of Gipsies

John Clare 1793 (Helpston) – 1864 (St Andrew's Hospital)



The snow falls deep; the forest lies alone;
The boy goes hasty for his load of brakes,
Then thinks upon the fire and hurries back;
The gipsy knocks his hands and tucks them up,
And seeks his squalid camp, half hid in snow,
Beneath the oak which breaks away the wind,
And bushes close in snow-like hovel warm;
There tainted mutton wastes upon the coals,
And the half-wasted dog squats close and rubs,
Then feels the heat too strong, and goes aloof;
He watches well, but none a bit can spare,
And vainly waits the morsel thrown away.
Tis thus they live--a picture to the place,
A quiet, pilfering, unprotected race.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLMM
Poetic Form
Metre 0111010101 0111011111 11010100101 011110111 0111011101 0101110101 0101011101 1101010101 0011011101 1101110101 1101110111 0101010101 1111010101 0101000101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 608
Words 113
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 479
Words per stanza (avg) 111
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 02, 2023

33 sec read
143

John Clare

John Clare was an English poet in his time he was commonly known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet more…

All John Clare poems | John Clare Books

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