Analysis of The Blind Girl
William Topaz McGonagall 1825 – 1902 (Greyfriars Parish, Edinburgh)
Kind Christians, pray list to me,
And I'll relate a sad story,
Concerning a little blind girl, only nine years of age,
Who lived with her father in a lonely cottage.
Poor girl, she had never seen the blessed light of day,
Nor the beautiful fields of corn and hay,
Nor the sparrows, that lifted their heads at early morn
To bright Sol that does the hills adorn.
And near the cottage door there was an elm tree;
But that stunted elm tree she never did see,
Yet her little heart sometimes felt gay
As she listened to the thrushes that warbled the live-long day.
And she would talk to the wren when alone,
And to the wren she would her loneliness bemoan,
And say, "Dear little wren, come again to-morrow;
Now be sure and come, your singing will chase away my sorrow."
She was motherless, but she had a drunken father,
Who in his savage moods drank all he could gather,
And would often cruelly beat her until she would cry,
"Dear father, if you beat me I will surely die."
She spent the days in getting ready her father's food,
Which was truly for her drunken father's good;
But one night he came home, reeling drunk,
And the poor child's heart with fear sunk;
And he cried, "You were at the door when I came up the lane;
Take that, you good-for-nothing slut; you're to blame
For not having my supper ready; you will find
That's no excuse, Sarah, because you are blind."
And with a stick he struck her as he spoke
Across the shoulders, until the stick almost broke;
Crying aloud, "I'll teach you better, you little sneak;"
And with the beating, Sarah's heart was like to break.
Poor little Sarah had never seen the snow;
She knew it was beautiful white, some children told her so;
And in December, when the snow began to fall,
She would go to the door and make a snowball.
One day she'd been very cheerless and alone,
Poor child, and so cold, almost chilled to the bone;
For her father had spent his wages in drink,
And for want of fire she was almost at death's brink.
Her face was pinched with hunger but she never complained,
And her little feet with cold were chilblained,
And her father that day had not come home for dinner,
And the dull grey sky was all of a shimmer.
So poor Sarah was very sick when her father came home;
So bad, little dear, that she did sigh and moan,
And when her father saw her in bed
He was heart-stricken with fear and dread.
So within a few days poor Sarah did die,
And for the loss of Sarah the drunken father did cry,
So the loss of his child soon converted him
From drinking either whiskey, rum or gin.
Scheme | AAXX BBCC AABB DDEE FFGG XXHH XXII JJXX EEKK DDLL XBFF XDMM GGXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (54%) |
Metre | 1101111 01010110 01001011101111 111010001010 111110101111 1010011101 1010110111101 111110101 01010111111 11101111011 101010111 111010101100111 0111101101 010111010001 011101101110 111011101101110 1110011101010 101101111110 0110101001111 110111111101 1101010100101 11101010101 111111101 00111111 01110101111101 11111101111 111011010111 11011001111 0101110111 01010010111 1001111101101 010101011111 11010110101 11111001110101 000101010111 1111010101 1111101001 1101111101 10101111001 011110111111 0111110111001 001011101 0010111111110 00111111010 11101101101011 11101111101 010101001 111101101 10101111011 01011100101011 10111110101 1101010111 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 2,501 |
Words | 485 |
Sentences | 13 |
Stanzas | 13 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 52 |
Letters per line (avg) | 38 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 151 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 37 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 2:27 min read
- 38 Views
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"The Blind Girl" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/41874/the-blind-girl>.
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