Analysis of Goophic Phantasm
Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis 1876 (Auburn) – 1938 (Melbourne)
Tho' I own I have no adequate proofs
Of this queer tale of the quaint old Goophs
The Goophs who dwelt in the land of Guph
Still, I think it's a credible tale enough
When applied to Goophs; tho' it's realised
That it couldn't occur to the civilised,
Sane men like us, for it's quite absurd,
And the silliest tale that ever you heard.
To us, 'tis a fantasy vain. But then,
Of course, we're superior, normal men.
Now a peaceful Gooph, when a-stroll one day,
Looked over a fence in a casual way;
And realised he was staring hard
At a pile of stones in a neighbor's yard.
'Now what,' thought he, 'are the stones there for?'
Then he suddenly shouted, 'My, this means war!
That pile in there is the very stuff
We use for war in the land of Guph!'
And from that day forth his strength was spent
In gathering stones for armament.
Now, the Goophs who heard him were sore afright,
And the news spread forth in a single night.
Wild rumors grew, till the land was rife
With tales of terror and coming strife;
And every Gooph hied forth in haste
To gather him stones from wood and waste,
From the hills afar and fields near by,
Till the price of stones went up sky high.
And they said, 'War's madness! It can't make sense.
But a Gooph must look to his self-defence.'
Commerce languished; production waned;
Goophish relations grew co1d and strained;
And there wasn't a stone in Guph at all
To build a house, or a church, or a wall.
Each sat on his pile in his own backyard
And talked and shouted and argued hard,
Of nations and factions in 'isms' and schools.
(There is never a doubt of it, Goophs were fools).
Then someone foolishly heaved a rock;
And their world blew up with a horrible shock.
Then their costly stones they flung to the air
With great abandon and little care -
These stones they valued, they cast them about
Till a number of Goophs were knocked right out.
And the land of Guph grew loud with groans;
And the end of it all was a litter of stones.
And nobody knew what they started it for,
And nobody profited. Still, 'twas war,
Mere Guphic insanity, Goophish fuss,
And, of course, it couldn't occur to us.
Scheme | AABBCCCCDD CXCCEEBBCC CCBBCCXBFF CCGGCCHHII JJCCKKEELL |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (24%) Tetractys (20%) |
Metre | 1111111001 111110111 011100111 11110100101 10111111 111001101 111111101 00100111011 1110100111 1110100101 1010110111 11001001001 0111101 1011100101 111110111 11100101111 110110101 111100111 011111111 010011100 101111011 0011100101 110110111 111100101 010011101 110111101 101010111 101111111 0111101111 1011111101 10100101 101011101 0110010111 1101101101 111110111 010100101 11001001001 11100111101 11100101 01111101001 1110111101 110100101 1111011101 1010110111 001111111 001111101011 011111011 01100111 11010011 0111100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 2,072 |
Words | 403 |
Sentences | 22 |
Stanzas | 5 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 |
Lines Amount | 50 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 324 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 80 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 2:02 min read
- 61 Views
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"Goophic Phantasm" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/6348/goophic-phantasm>.
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