Analysis of The Happiest Man in England
William Henry Ogilvie 1869 (Scotland) – 1963
The happiest man in England rose an hour before the dawn;
The stars were in the purple and the dew was on the lawn;
He sang from bed to bathroom-he could only sing ‘John Peel' ;
He donned his boots and breeches and he buckled on his steel.
He chose his brightest waistcoat and his stock with care he tied,
Though scarce a soul would see him in his early morning ride.
He hurried to the stable through the dim light of the stars,
And there his good horse waited, clicking rings and bridle-bars.
The happiest man in England took a grey lock in his hand
And settled in his saddle like a seagull on the sand.
Then from the shadowy kennel all the eager pack outpoured,
And the happiest man in England saw them scatter on the sward.
He trotted through the beeches long before the east was red,
Then he turned across the pasture and he gave the grey his head;
And the hounds swept on beside him in a merry mottled crowd,
And he blew them down the valley with a horn-blast, good and loud.
The happiest man in England turned down the stony lane,
The heart of him was singing as he heard the hoofs again;
And where the blind ditch narrows and the deep-set gorse begins
He waved his pack to covert, and he cheered them through the whins.
He heard old Gladstone whimper, then Merryman give tongue;
He saw the green gorse shaking as the whole pack checked and swung;
Then through the ditch came creeping a shy cub lithe and lean,
And nothing but a cocked grey ear betrayed that he was seen.
But once beyond the brambles and across the heath and clear
With half a league of open ground and not a whinbush near,
The happiest man in England blew the freedom of the pass,
And two-and-twenty couple backed his music on the grass.
He holds no brief for slaughter, but the cubs must take their chance;
The weak must first go under that the strong may lead the dance;
And when the grey strides out and shakes the foam- flecks from his rings
The happiest man in England would not change his place with kings.
Scheme | AABBCCDDEECFGGHHIJKDLLMMNNOOPPQQ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0100101011100101 01000100011101 1111111110111 1111010110111 1111010111111 11011110110101 11010101011101 01111101010101 010010101011011 0100110101101 11010010101011 0010010101110101 1101011010111 111010100110111 001110110010101 011110101011101 01001010110101 01111101110101 01011100011101 11111100111101 111110110011 11011101011101 1101110011101 01010111011111 11010100010101 1101110101011 010010101010101 01010101110101 11111101011111 01111101011101 01011101011111 010010101111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,992 |
Words | 376 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 32 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 49 |
Words per line (avg) | 12 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,570 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 375 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 1:52 min read
- 96 Views
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