Analysis of Phoebe Ann, The Proud Girl
Heinrich Hoffmann 1809 (Frankfurt,) – 1894 (Frankfurt,)
This Phoebe Ann was a very proud girl,
Her nose had always an upward curl.
She thought herself better than all others beside,
And beat even the peacock himself in pride.
She thought the earth was so dirty and brown,
That never, by chance, would she look down;
And she held up her head in the air so high
That her neck began stretching by and by.
It stretched and it stretched; and it grew so long
That her parents thought something must be wrong.
It stretched and stretched, and they soon began
To look up with fear at their Phoebe Ann.
They prayed her to stop her upward gaze,
But Phoebe kept on in her old proud ways,
Until her neck had grown so long and spare
That her head was more than her neck could bear--
And it bent to the ground, like a willow tree,
And brought down the head of this proud Phoebe,
Until whenever she went out a walk to take,
The boys would shout, "Here comes a snake!"
Her head got to be so heavy to drag on,
That she had to put it on a little wagon.
So don't, my friends, hold your head too high,
Or your neck may stretch, too, by and by.
Scheme | AA BB CCDDEEFF GGHHIIJJ XXDD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101101011 01111101 110110111001 0110010101 1101111001 110111111 01110100111 1010110101 1101101111 1010110111 110101101 1111111101 110110101 1101100111 0101111101 1011110111 0111011011 0110111110 010101110111 01111101 01111110111 111111101010 111111111 111111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,067 |
Words | 221 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 2, 8, 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 24 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 164 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 42 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on April 28, 2023
- 1:06 min read
- 33 Views
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"Phoebe Ann, The Proud Girl" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 16 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/55531/phoebe-ann%2C-the-proud-girl>.
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