Analysis of A Study in the 'Nood'
Henry Lawson 1867 (Grenfell) – 1922 (Sydney)
He was bare—we don’t want to be rude—
(His condition was owing to drink)
They say his condition was nood,
Which amounts to the same thing, we think
(We mean his condition, we think,
’Twas a naked condition, or nood,
Which amounts to the same thing, we think)
Uncovered he lay on the grass
That shrivelled and shrunk; and he stayed
Three hot summer days, while the glass
Was one hundred and ten in the shade.
(We nearly remarked that he laid,
But that was bad grammar we thought—
It does sound bucolic, we think
It smacks of the barnyard—
Of farming—of pullets in short.)
Unheeded he lay on the dirt;
Beside him a part of his dress,
A tattered and threadbare old shirt
Was raised as a flag of distress.
(On a stick, like a flag of distress—
Reversed—we mean that the tail-end was up
half-mast—on a stick—an evident flag of distress.)
Perhaps in his dreams he persood
Bright visions of heav’nly bliss;
And artists who study the nood
Never saw such a study as this.
The ‘luggage’ went by and the guard
Looked out and his eyes fell on Grice—
We fancy he looked at him hard,
We think that he looked at him twice.
They say (if the telegram’s true)
When he woke up he wondered (good Lord!)
‘Why the engine-man didn’t heave to—
‘Why the train didn’t take him aboard.’
And now, by the case of poor Grice,
We think that a daily express
Should travel with sunshades and ice,
And a lookout for flags of distress.
Scheme | abaBbaBcdcddxbex fgfggxg ahaheiei jkjkigig |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111111111 101011011 11101011 101101111 11101011 101001011 101101111 01011101 1101011 11101101 111001001 11001111 11111011 11101011 11101 1101101 01011101 01101111 0100111 11101101 101101101 0111101111 1110111001101 0101111 110111 01011001 101101011 01011001 11011111 11011111 11111111 1110101 111111011 10101111 10111101 01101111 11101001 1101101 00111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,418 |
Words | 267 |
Sentences | 10 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 16, 7, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 39 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 269 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 65 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:20 min read
- 54 Views
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"A Study in the 'Nood'" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/17715/a-study-in-the-%27nood%27>.
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