Analysis of A Girls' Grave

Patrick Edward Quinn 1862 (Darlinghurst) – 1926 (Manly)



What story is here of broken love,
  What idyllic sad romance,
What arrow fretted the silken dove
  That met with such grim mischance?

I picture you, sleeper of long ago,
  When you trifled and danced and smiled,
All golden laughter and beauty's glow
  In a girl life sweet and wild.

Hair with the red gold's luring tinge,
  Fine as the finest silk,
Violet eyes with a golden fringe
  And cheeks of roses and milk.

Something of this you must have been,
  Something gentle and sweet,
To have broken your heart at seventeen
  And died in such sad defeat.

Hardly one of your kinsfolk live,
  It was all so long ago,
The tale of the cruel love to give
  That laid you here so low.

Loving, trusting, and foully paid --
  The story is easily guessed,
A blotted sun and skies that fade
  And this grass-grown grave the rest.

Whatever the cynic may sourly say,
  With a dash of truth, I ween,
Of the girls of the period, in your day
  They had hearts at seventeen.

Dead of a fashion out of date,
  Such folly has passed away
Like the hoop and patch and modish gait
  That went out with an older day.

The stone is battered and all awry,
  The words can be scarcely read,
The rank reeds clustering thick and high
  Over your buried head.

I pluck one straight as a Paynim's lance
  To keep your memory green,
For the lordly sake of old Romance
  And your own, sad seventeen.


Scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GHIH XCXC JKJK LGLI MLML NONO BIBI
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 110111101 1010101 110100101 111111 1101101101 1110101 11010011 0011101 11011101 110101 100110101 0111001 10111111 101001 1110111101 0101101 1011111 1111101 011010111 111111 1010011 01011001 01010111 0111101 10010111 1011111 10110100011 1111101 11010111 1101101 10101011 11111101 011100101 0111101 011100101 101101 11111011 1111001 10111101 0111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,371
Words 253
Sentences 11
Stanzas 10
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 40
Letters per line (avg) 26
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 103
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:16 min read
128

Patrick Edward Quinn

Patrick Edward Quinn was an Australian politician. Born in Darlinghurst to postal officer Edward Quinn and Catherine McCarty, he attended Marist Brothers School and Fort Street Public School in Sydney. more…

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