Analysis of Grown-Up Talk

Katherine Mansfield 1888 (Wellington) – 1923 (Fontainebleau, Île-de-France)



Half-Past-Six and I were talking
In a very grown-up way;
We had got so tired with running
That we did not want to play.

"How do babies come, I wonder,"
He said, looking at the sky,
"Does God mix the things together
An' just make it-like a pie?"

I was really not quite certain,
But it sounded very nice;
It was all that we could think of,
Besides a book said "sugar and spice."

Half-Past-Six said--He's so clever--
Cleverer than me, I mean...
"I suppose God makes the black ones
When the saucepan isn't clean."


Scheme ABAB CDCD XEXE CFXF
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 11101010 0010111 111110110 1111111 11101110 1110101 11101010 1111101 11101110 1110101 11111111 010111001 11111110 11111 10111011 101101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 502
Words 101
Sentences 6
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 95
Words per stanza (avg) 24
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

29 sec read
89

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. more…

All Katherine Mansfield poems | Katherine Mansfield Books

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