Analysis of Interior

Padraic Colum 1881 (County Longford) – 1972 (Enfield)



THE little moths are creeping
Across the cottage pane;
On the floor the chickens gather,
And they make talk and complain.

And she sits by the fire
Who has reared so many men;
Her voice is low like the chickens'
With the things she says again:

'The sons that come back do be restless,
They search for the thing to say;
Then they take thought like the swallows,
And the morrow brings them away.

In the old, old days upon Innish,
The fields were lucky and bright,
And if you lay down you'd be covered
By the grass of one soft night.

And doves flew with every burial
That went to Innishore
Two white doves with the coffened,
But the doves fly no more.'

She speaks and the chickens gather,
And they make talk and complain,
While the little moths are creeping
Across the cottage pane.


Scheme aBcB cdxd xexe xfxf xcfx cBaB
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 0101110 010101 10101010 0111001 0111010 1111101 01111010 1011101 011111110 1110111 11111010 00101101 00111011 0101001 011111110 1011111 0111100100 1111 111101 101111 11001010 0111001 10101110 010101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 763
Words 149
Sentences 6
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 102
Words per stanza (avg) 24
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
70

Padraic Colum

Padraic Colum was an Irish poet, novelist, dramatist, biographer, playwright, children's author and collector of folklore. more…

All Padraic Colum poems | Padraic Colum Books

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