Analysis of Song Of Starlings

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



WE'VE watched the starlings flocking past the statues
That we have often seen in other cities
Hope, Justice, Commerce and have heard them sing
Unvarying songs that are their memories-
Memories of winds that they've been blown by,
And rivers bordered with their beds of sedges,
And level lands on which are empty folds.
Daylight dims, and we
May not return to where a lamp
Beams, making a room familiar, and a wife
Tells of the children's doings: we hear the starlings
As we have heard them often in other cities,
Around other cupolas, along other cornices,
In sunless parks bunched on the tops of trees,
And see around us bleak, monotonous fields
Our hearts must ever hold theirs are these songs
These are the songs that most touch us exiles!


Scheme ABCBDAEFGHABABIJK
Poetic Form
Metre 110110101 11110101010 1101001111 11111100 1001111111 0101011111 0101111101 1101 11011101 11001010001 11010101101 111111001010 0110101101 011110111 01011101001 10111011111 110111111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 734
Words 133
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 17
Lines Amount 17
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 593
Words per stanza (avg) 131
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
83

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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