Analysis of Out of Sorts
William Schwenck Gilbert 1836 – 1911
When you find you're a broken-down critter,
Who is all of a trimmle and twitter,
With your palate unpleasantly bitter,
As if you'd just bitten a pill -
When your legs are as thin as dividers,
And you're plagued with unruly insiders,
And your spine is all creepy with spiders,
And you're highly gamboge in the gill -
When you've got a beehive in your head,
And a sewing machine in each ear,
And you feel that you've eaten your bed,
And you've got a bad headache DOWN HERE -
When such facts are about,
And these symptoms you find
In your body or crown -
Well, it's time to look out,
You may make up your mind
You had better lie down!
When your lips are all smeary - like tallow,
And your tongue is decidedly yallow,
With a pint of warm oil in your swAllow,
And a pound of tin-tacks in your chest -
When you're down in the mouth with the vapours,
And all over your new Morris papers
Black-beetles are cutting their capers,
And crawly things never at rest -
When you doubt if your head is your own,
And you jump when an open door slams -
Then you've got to a state which is known
To the medical world as "jim-jams."
If such symptoms you find
In your body or head,
They're not easy to quell -
You may make up your mind
You are better in bed,
For you're not at all well!
Scheme | aaabcccbdedefghfGh ibijcccjkckcgdlGdl |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111010110 111101010 1110010010 11111001 11111111 0111010010 0111110110 01101001 11101011 001001011 011111011 01101111 111101 011011 011011 111111 111111 111011 111111110 01111001 1011110110 001111011 111001101 0110111010 110110110 01011011 111111111 011111011 111101111 101001111 111011 011011 111011 111111 111001 111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,237 |
Words | 253 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 18, 18 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 483 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 125 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:19 min read
- 101 Views
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"Out of Sorts" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 16 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/41254/out-of-sorts>.
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