Village Mystery
Elinor Morton Wylie 1885 (Somerville, New Jersey) – 1928 (New York City, New York)
The woman in the pointed hood
And cloak blue-gray like a pigeon's wing,
Whose orchard climbs to the balsam-wood,
Has done a cruel thing.
To her back door-step came a ghost,
A girl who had been ten years dead,
She stood by the granite hitching-post
And begged for a piece of bread.
Now why should I, who walk alone,
Who am ironical and proud,
Turn, when a woman casts a stone
At a beggar in a shroud?
I saw the dead girl cringe and whine,
And cower in the weeping air--
But, oh, she was no kin of mine,
And so I did not care!
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 32 sec read
- 69 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABAB CDCD EFEF GHGH |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 529 |
Words | 107 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"Village Mystery" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/10189/village-mystery>.
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