Analysis of Emmonsail's Heath in Winter

John Clare 1793 (Helpston) – 1864 (St Andrew's Hospital)



I love to see the old heath's withered brake
Mingle its crimpled leaves with furze and ling,
While the old heron from the lonely lake
Starts slow and flaps its melancholy wing,
An oddling crow in idle motion swing
On the half-rotten ash-tree's topmost twig,
Beside whose trunk the gypsy makes his bed.
Up flies the bouncing woodcock from the brig
Where a black quagmire quakes beneath the tread;
The fieldfares chatter in the whistling thorn
And for the haw round fields and closen rove,
And coy bumbarrels, twenty in a drove,
Flit down the hedgerows in the frozen plain
And hang on little twigs and start again.


Scheme ABABBCDCDEFFGH
Poetic Form
Metre 1111011101 101111101 1011010101 110111001 111010101 101101111 0111010111 110101101 1011010101 011000101 010111011 01110001 110100101 0111010101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 607
Words 110
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 492
Words per stanza (avg) 108
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 10, 2023

33 sec read
100

John Clare

John Clare was an English poet in his time he was commonly known as the Northamptonshire Peasant Poet more…

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