Analysis of The Devil's Thoughts
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772 (Ottery St Mary) – 1834 (Highgate)
From his brimstone bed at break of day
A walking the DEVIL is gone,
To visit his little snug farm of the earth
And see how his stock went on.
Over the hill and over the dale,
And he went over the plain,
And backward and forward he swished his long tail
As a gentleman swishes his cane.
And how then was the Devil drest?
Oh! he was in his Sunday's best:
His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,
And there was a hole where the tail came through.
He saw a LAWYER killing a Viper
On a dung heap beside his stable,
And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind
Of Cain and _his_ brother, Abel.
A POTHECARY on a white horse
Rode by on his vocations,
And the Devil thought of his old Friend
DEATH in the Revelations.
He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,
A cottage of gentility!
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.
He went into a rich bookseller's shop,
Quoth he! we are both of one college,
For I myself sate like a cormorant once
Fast by the tree of knowledge.
Down the river there plied, with wind and tide,
A pig with vast celerity;
And the Devil look'd wise as he saw how the while,
It cut its own throat. 'There!' quoth he with a smile,
'Goes 'England's commercial prosperity.''
As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw
A solitary cell;
And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint
For improving his prisons in Hell.
* * * * * *
General ----------- burning face
He saw with consternation,
And back to hell his way did he take,
For the Devil thought by a slight mistake
It was general conflagration.
Scheme | AXXX BCBC AXDD XEXE XFXF XGXG XXXX XGHHG XIXI XJKKJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111011111 01001011 11011011101 0111111 100101001 0111001 01001011111 101001011 01110101 1110111 1101101101 0110110111 1101010010 101101110 00101111101 11011010 011011 1111010 001011111 100010 11010101011 01010100 00101111101 11110100 11010111 111111110 1111101001 1101110 1010111101 01110100 001011111101 11111111101 1100100100 111111111 01001 001011111101 101011001 1 100101 111010 011111111 1010110101 11100010 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,518 |
Words | 306 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 11 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 4, 1, 5 |
Lines Amount | 43 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 108 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 23, 2023
- 1:32 min read
- 175 Views
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