Analysis of The shape of things to come
JP. 1948 (United Kingdom)
THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME
Your carbon footprint is too big
If you are in a hole please don’t dig
Just take a reduction in that you use
We could just ban things or you can choose
You need to save more he smiled and said
Not a thought of the consequence entered his head
Around sixty percent it must come down
As he pursed the lips and set the frown
Give up the car that’s twenty percent
Use a bus instead is that what he meant.
Walk ten miles to the nearest bus route
Oh yes he is serious and quite resolute
Turn off all equipment and throw it away
There’ll be no hot food for many a day
If it uses electric we cannot have that
That’s ten more percent well how about that?
Rip out all the radiators no heating allowed
Another twenty percent this side of the shroud
And while we’re about it no fires no gas
Hot water or cold you can turn of the tap
But it’s still not enough we simply need more
As he countered inaction and totted up score
No more foreign holidays no fights to the sun
Ten more percent that about it, all done
They saw it was good and went with the plan
The deprived blindly followed the word of the man
So that my dear children is why we live in this cave
There is no more carbon out there left to save
And out on the heath woolly mammoths roam wild
The ozone round here is fresh and unspoiled
We saved sixty percent, did our bit for the Earth
But I do see your point, what was it all worth?
We have no house to live in, the washing takes days
We can’t go on holiday and we are living as slaves
Yet out in America, China and Japan
They all still burn carbon as fast as they can
So please tell us dad why you did it this way?
Can we please have our house back, maybe someday?
Can we have a computer? Michael Gove said we can!
Just before he told us of carbon free man
Scheme | X AAXXBBCC DDEEFFGG HHXXIIJJ KKLLXXMM XXKKFFKK |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 011111 1101111 111001111 1100100111 111111111 111111101 101101001011 0110011111 111010101 110111001 1010111111 111101011 11111000110 11101001101 1111111001 111001011011 1110111011 111010011001 010100111101 01001111011 11011111101 11110111011 11100100111 11101011101 1101101111 1111101101 001101001101 1111101111011 11111011111 01101101011 011111001 1110011101101 11111111111 111111001011 1111100111011 110010010001 11111011111 11111111111 11111011101 1110010101111 10111111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,763 |
Words | 364 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 41 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 234 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 61 |
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"The shape of things to come" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/100370/the-shape-of-things-to-come>.
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