Analysis of How Beastly the Bourgeois Is
David Herbert Lawrence 1885 (Eastwood, Nottinghamshire) – 1930 (Vence)
How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--
Presentable, eminently presentable--
shall I make you a present of him?
Isn't he handsome? Isn't he healthy? Isn't he a fine specimen?
Doesn't he look the fresh clean Englishman, outside?
Isn't it God's own image? tramping his thirty miles a day
after partridges, or a little rubber ball?
wouldn't you like to be like that, well off, and quite the
thing
Oh, but wait!
Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another
man's need,
let him come home to a bit of moral difficulty, let life
face him with a new demand on his understanding
and then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.
Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully.
Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new
demand on his intelligence,
a new life-demand.
How beastly the bourgeois is
especially the male of the species--
Nicely groomed, like a mushroom
standing there so sleek and erect and eyeable--
and like a fungus, living on the remains of a bygone life
sucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life
than his own.
And even so, he's stale, he's been there too long.
Touch him, and you'll find he's all gone inside
just like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollow
under a smooth skin and an upright appearance.
Full of seething, wormy, hollow feelings
rather nasty--
How beastly the bourgeois is!
Standing in their thousands, these appearances, in damp
England
what a pity they can't all be kicked over
like sickening toadstools, and left to melt back, swiftly
into the soil of England.
Scheme | AB cx xdxxxe xfxgeehxix AB xcggx xdxi xhA xjfhj |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110011 010011010 010010000100 111101011 101101011010101100 101101110011 101111010110101 101001010101 1011111111010 1 111 1110101011111010 11 1111101110100011 111010111010 01111101011 111010110011010 1100111010101 01110100 01101 110011 010011010 1011010 1011100101 010101010011011 1011110111101 111 01011111111 1101111101 1111101101010 100110101010 111011010 1010 110011 1001101010001 10 10101111110 110010111110 0101110 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,534 |
Words | 283 |
Sentences | 17 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 2, 6, 10, 2, 5, 4, 3, 5 |
Lines Amount | 39 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 135 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 31 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 16, 2023
- 1:28 min read
- 113 Views
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