Analysis of The Poison-Flower
John Boyle O'Reilly 1844 (Dowth) – 1890 (Boston)
IIN the evergreen shade of an Austral wood,
Where the long branches laced above,
Through which all day it seemed
The sweet sunbeams down-gleamed
Like the rays of a young mother's love,
When she hides her glad face with her hands and peeps
At the youngling that crows on her knee:
'Neath such ray-shivered shade,
In a banksia glade,
Was this flower first shown to me.
A rich pansy it was, with a small white lip
And a wonderful purple hood;
And your eye caught the sheen
Of its leaves, parrot-green,
Down the dim gothic aisles of the wood.
And its foliage rich on the moistureless sand
Made you long for its odorous breath;
But ah! 'twas to take
To your bosom a snake,
For its pestilent fragrance was death.
And I saw it again, in a far northern land,—
Not a pansy, not purple and white;
Yet in beauteous guise
Did this poison-plant rise,
Fair and fatal again to my sight.
And men longed for her kiss and her odorous breath
When no friend was beside them to tell
That to kiss was to die,
That her truth was a lie,
And her beauty a soul-killing spell.
Scheme | ABCCBXDEED XAFFAGHIIH GJKKJHLMML |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (27%) Etheree (20%) |
Metre | 1010111101 10110101 111111 01111 101101101 11101110101 10111101 111101 0011 11101111 01101110111 00100101 011101 111101 101101101 011011011 111111001 11111 111001 1111011 011101001101 101011001 1011 111011 101001111 011101001001 111101111 111111 101101 001001101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,056 |
Words | 201 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 10, 10, 10 |
Lines Amount | 30 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 273 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 66 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 08, 2023
- 1:00 min read
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"The Poison-Flower" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 5 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/22070/the-poison-flower>.
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