Analysis of Shameful Death
There were four of us about that bed;
The mass-priest knelt at the side,
I and his mother stood at the head,
Over his feet lay the bride;
We were quite sure that he was dead,
Though his eyes were open wide.
He did not die in the night,
He did not die in the day,
But in the morning twilight
His spirit pass'd away,
When neither sun nor moon was bright,
And the trees were merely grey.
He was not slain with the sword,
Knight's axe, or the knightly spear,
Yet spoke he never a word
After he came in here;
I cut away the cord
From the neck of my brother dear.
He did not strike one blow,
For the recreants came behind,
In a place where the hornbeams grow,
A path right hard to find,
For the hornbeam boughs swing so,
That the twilight makes it blind.
They lighted a great torch then,
When his arms were pinion'd fast,
Sir John the knight of the Fen,
Sir Guy of the Dolorous Blast,
With knights threescore and ten,
Hung brave Lord Hugh at last.
I am threescore and ten,
And my hair is all turn'd grey,
But I met Sir John of the Fen
Long ago on a summer day,
And am glad to think of the moment when
I took his life away.
I am threescore and ten,
And my strength is mostly pass'd,
But long ago I and my men,
When the sky was overcast,
And the smoke roll'd over the reeds of the fen,
Slew Guy of the Dolorous Blast.
And now, knights all of you,
I pray you pray for Sir Hugh,
A good knight and a true,
And for Alice, his wife, pray too.
Scheme | ababab cdcdcd efxxef ghghgh ijijij Ididid Ijijij kkkk |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101110111 0111101 101101101 1011101 10111111 1110101 1111001 1111001 100101 110101 11011111 0010101 1111101 1110101 1111001 101101 110101 10111101 111111 101101 0011011 011111 101111 101111 1100111 111011 1101101 111011 11101 111111 11101 0111111 11111101 10110101 0111110101 111101 11101 0111101 11011011 101110 00111001101 111011 011111 1111111 011001 01101111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,392 |
Words | 293 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 4 |
Lines Amount | 46 |
Letters per line (avg) | 24 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 136 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 36 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:29 min read
- 79 Views
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"Shameful Death" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/41131/shameful-death>.
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