Analysis of A Nautical Ballad
Charles Edward Carryl 1841 (New York) – 1920
A capital ship for an ocean trip,
Was the 'Walloping Window-blind';
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind.
The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow,
And it often appeared, when the weather had cleared,
That he'd been in his bunk below.
'The boatswain's mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement, too;
And he played hop-scotch with the starboard watch,
While the captain tickled the crew.
And the gunner we had was apparently mad,
For he sat on the after rail,
And fired salutes with the captain's boots,
In the teeth of the booming gale.
'The captain sat in a commodore's hat
And dined in a royal way
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
And gummery bread each day.
But the cook was Dutch and behaved as such;
For the diet he gave the crew
Was a number of tons of hot-cross buns
Prepared with sugar and glue.
'All nautical pride we laid aside,
And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles,
And the Rumbletumbunders roar.
And we sat on the edge of a sandy ledge
And shot at the whistling bee;
And the cinnamon-bats wore water-proof hats
As they danced in the sounding sea.
'On rubgub bark, from dawn to dark,
We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly shrunk,—when a Chinese junk
Came by from the torriby zone.
She was stubby and square, but we didn't much care,
And we cheerily put to sea;
And we left the crew of the junk to chew
The bark of the rubgub tree.'
Scheme | XABAXCXC XBXBXDXD XEXEXBXB XFXFXGXG XHXHXGBG |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (30%) |
Metre | 0100111101 10100101 11110101 1100101 011011111 0110101 011001101011 11101101 01111001 1110101 0111110101 10101001 001011101001 11110101 0100110101 00110101 010100101 0100101 110101001 01111 1011100111 10101101 1010111111 0111001 110011101 01101001 10111011 0011 01110110101 0110101 00100111011 11100101 1111111 1111111 100110011 111011 111001111011 011111 0110110111 011011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,422 |
Words | 275 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 226 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 54 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:24 min read
- 103 Views
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"A Nautical Ballad" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 13 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/5087/a-nautical-ballad>.
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