Analysis of 1805
Robert Graves 1895 (Wimbledon) – 1985 (Deià)
At Viscount Nelson’s lavish funeral,
While the mob milled and yelled about St Paul’s,
A General chatted with an Admiral:
“One of your colleagues, Sir, remarked today
That Nelson’s exit, though to be lamented,
Falls not inopportunely, in it’s way”
“He was a thorn in our flesh’, came the reply-
‘The mot bird-witted, unaccountable,
Odd little runt that ever I did spy”.
“One arm, one peeper, vain as Pretty Poll,
A meddler too, in foreign politics
And gave his heart in pawn to a plain moll.
“He would dare lecture us Sea Lords, and then
Would treat his ratings as though men of honour
And play leap-frog with his midshipmen!
We tried to box him down, but up he popped,
And when he banged Napoleon on the Nile
Became too much the hero to be dropped.
“You’ve heard that Copenhagen ‘blind eye’ story?
We’d tied him to Nurse Parker’s apron- strings-
By G-d, he snipped them through and snatched the glory!”
“Yet”, cried the General, ‘sic-and-twenty sail
Captured or sunk by him off Trafalgar-
That writes a handsome finis to the tale”
“Handsome enough. The seas are England’s now.
That fellow’s foibles need no longer plague us
He died most creditably, I’ll allow.”
“And Sir, the secret of his victories?”
“By his unServicelike, familiar ways, Sir,
He made the whole Fleet love him, damn his eyes!”
Scheme | AXA BXB CAC XXX DED FXF EXE GEG HXH XEX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 110110100 1011010111 01001011100 1111010101 1110111010 111011 110101011001 011100100 1101110111 111111101 01101010 0111011011 1111011101 1111011111 011111110 1111111111 01110100101 0111010111 1111001110 1111110101 111111101010 11010010101 1011111010 110101101 1001011101 11010111011 1111000101 0101011100 11101011 1101111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,337 |
Words | 232 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 10 |
Stanza Lengths | 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 99 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:09 min read
- 277 Views
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"1805" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31084/1805>.
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