Analysis of Mr Bleaney
Philip Larkin 1922 (Coventry) – 1985 (Hull)
This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,
Whose window shows a strip of building land,
Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took
My bit of garden properly in hand.'
Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook
Behind the door, no room for books or bags -
'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lie
Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags
On the same saucer-souvenir, and try
Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown
The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.
I know his habits - what time he came down,
His preference for sauce to gravy, why
He kept on plugging at the four aways -
Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk
Who put him up for summer holidays,
And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.
But if he stood and watched the frigid wind
Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed
Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,
And shivered, without shaking off the dread
That how we live measures our own nature,
And at his age having no more to show
Than one hired box should make him pretty sure
He warranted no better, I don't know.
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GFGF HIHI XJXJ XKXK |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain |
Metre | 11101111 0111110101 1111010101 1101110101 1101011101 1101011 1111010001 1011101111 0101111111 1111110111 110110111 101100101 1011110111 011110111 1111011111 1100111101 111101011 11101011 111111010 0101110101 1111010101 10111011 1001111101 0100110101 11111010110 0111101111 11101111101 1100110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,151 |
Words | 224 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 130 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 32 |
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"Mr Bleaney" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/54487/mr-bleaney>.
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