Analysis of Pink Dominoes
Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) – 1936 (London)
"They are fools who kiss and tell" --
Wisely has the poet sung.
Man may hold all sorts of posts
If he'll only hold his tongue.
Jenny and Me were engaged, you see,
On the eve of the Fancy Ball;
So a kiss or two was nothing to you
Or any one else at all.
Menny would go in a domino --
Pretty and pink but warm;
While I attended, clad in a splendid
Austrian uniform.
Now we had arranged, through notes exchanged
Early that afternoon,
At Number Four to waltz no more,
But to sit in the dusk and spoon.
I wish you to see that Jenny and Me
Had barely exchanged our troth;
So a kiss or two was strictly due
By, from, and between us both.
When Three was over, an eager lover,
I fled to the gloom outside;
And a Domino came out also
Whom I took for my future bride.
That is to say, in a casual way,
I slipped my arm around her;
With a kiss or two (which is nothing to you),
And ready to kiss I found her.
She turned her head and the name she said
Was certainly not my own;
But ere I could speak, with a smothered shriek
She fled and left me alone.
Then Jenny came, and I saw with shame
She'd doffed her domino;
And I had embraced an alien waist --
But I did not tell her so.
Next morn I knew that there were two
Dominoes pink, and one
Had cloaked the spouse of Sir Julian Vouse,
Our big Political gun.
Sir J. was old, and her hair was gold,
And her eye was a blue cerulean;
And the name she said when she turned her head
Was not in the least like "Julian."
Scheme | XABA CDED FGXG XHXH CIEI JKFK XJEJ LMXM XFXF ENBN XFLN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 1111101 1010101 1111111 1110111 100100111 10110101 1011111011 1101111 1110010 100111 1101010010 10010 111011101 10101 11011111 11100101 1111111001 11001101 101111101 1100111 1111011010 1110111 00101110 11111101 1111001001 1111010 10111111011 01011110 110100111 1100111 1111110101 1101101 110101111 11010 0110111001 1111101 11111101 10101 1101111001 10101001 111100111 0011011 0011111101 110011100 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,412 |
Words | 302 |
Sentences | 14 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 44 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 100 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 16, 2023
- 1:30 min read
- 123 Views
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"Pink Dominoes" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33310/pink-dominoes>.
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