Analysis of The Little Brother
Dora Sigerson Shorter 1866 (Dublin) – 1918
O brother, brother, come down to the crags by the bay,
Come down to the caves where I play;
For oh! I saw on the rocks, asleep,
A fair mermaid, and the slow waves creep
To bear her away, away.
O brother, brother, come quick, till you laugh with me,
For no mermaid so fair is she,
But the little lass that I saw last night,
(I hid in the shade, you stood in the light),
And she weeping most bitterly.
O brother, brother, I watched her the live-long day,
Saw her hair grow jewelled with spray;
Once her cheek was brushed by a gull's wet wing,
And a finch flew down on her hand to sing,
And was not afraid to stay.
O brother, brother, will she soon awakened be?
I would she might laugh now with me.
She sleeps, and the world so full of sound—
She's so deaf, like the dead that are under the ground,
That I laugh and laugh to see.
Scheme | AABBACCDDCAAEEACCFFC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (25%) |
Metre | 1101011101101 11101111 111110101 01100111 1100101 110101111111 1111111 1010111111 1100111001 01101100 110101100111 1011111 1011110111 0011110111 0110111 110101110101 11111111 110011111 111101111001 1110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 817 |
Words | 168 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 621 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 166 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 51 sec read
- 68 Views
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