Analysis of A Christmas Ghost-Story
Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies - your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."
Scheme | AABBXXCC DDCC |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111110 011011100 0101011111 0101110101 10111111 110101111 111011110 1111010101 0111011101 01010100101 1101010111 111011111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 521 |
Words | 96 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4 |
Lines Amount | 12 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 198 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 46 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on April 19, 2023
- 28 sec read
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"A Christmas Ghost-Story" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/56754/a-christmas-ghost-story>.
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