Analysis of The Old Ghost

Thomas Lovell Beddoes 1803 (Clifton, Bristol) – 1849 (Basel)



Over the water an old ghost strode
To a churchyard on the shore,
And over him the waters had flowed
A thousand years or more,
And pale and wan and weary
Looked never a sprite as he;
For it's lonely and it's dreary
The ghost of a body to be
That has mouldered away in the sea.

Over the billows the old ghost stepped,
And the winds in mockery sung;
For the bodiless ghost would fain have wept
Over the maiden that lay so young
'Mong the thistles and toadstools so hoary;
And he begged of the waves a tear,
But they shook upwards their moonlight glory,
And the shark looked on with a sneer
At his yearning desire and agony.


Scheme ABABCCCCC DEDECXCXC
Poetic Form
Metre 100101111 101101 010101011 010111 0101010 1100111 11100110 01101011 11101001 100100111 00101001 10111111 100101111 101001110 01110101 111101110 00111101 11100100100
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 611
Words 123
Sentences 3
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 9, 9
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 244
Words per stanza (avg) 61
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 20, 2023

37 sec read
70

Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Thomas Lovell Beddoes was an English poet, dramatist and physician. more…

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