Analysis of The River Rats
By the rivers embankment the river rats awaken
Arid and parched they congregate
Their colourless charcoaled frames smudge and blend into the grubbing landscape.
Dank and filthy they sit by the bulrushes
in quiet desideratum drinking from cracked vessels through broken teeth
Their pallor mortis coloured skin gives them a corpselike appearance
From a distance they resemble the discarded
waste fly tipped along the roadside
Sheltered by the Alder trees a Water Vole nibbles on a horsetail
A River rat sings a lullaby
Accompanying him is a Riverside warbler
singing along in harmony
The river Rat finishes singing
He lies his Moribund Body on a grassy mound
He closes his eyes for the last time
On a nearby sandy shore the washed
up flotsam and jetsam is getting its daily
costal clean up
By the riverside unwanted human detritus
is being cleared away along with a dead river rat no one will know even existed
Unwanted
Human detritus
Scheme | XX X AX A BX XXXC XXX XCX AXBA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10100100101010 1001110 111110101011 101011101 01011011101101 11101011101010 101010100010 1110101 1010101010110101 01011010 010001101010 10010100 010110010 1111001010101 110111011 101110101 11001110110 111 101001010010 11010101101101111110010 010 10010 |
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 960 |
Words | 184 |
Sentences | 2 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 4, 3, 3, 4 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 86 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 18 |
About this poem
About people who spend their days by the river drinking. Discarded and forgotten by society. It’s also about how wasteful life can be.
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"The River Rats" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/163978/the-river-rats>.
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