Analysis of The Ladies
I've taken my fun where I've found it;
I've rogued an' I've ranged in my time;
I've 'ad my pickin' o' sweet'earts,
An' four o' the lot was prime.
One was an 'arf-caste widow,
One was a woman at Prome,
One was the wife of a ~jemadar-sais~, [Head-groom.]
An' one is a girl at 'ome.
Now I aren't no 'and with the ladies,
For, takin' 'em all along,
You never can say till you've tried 'em,
An' then you are like to be wrong.
There's times when you'll think that you mightn't,
There's times when you'll know that you might;
But the things you will learn from the Yellow an' Brown,
They'll 'elp you a lot with the White!
I was a young un at 'Oogli,
Shy as a girl to begin;
Aggie de Castrer she made me,
An' Aggie was clever as sin;
Older than me, but my first un --
More like a mother she were --
Showed me the way to promotion an' pay,
An' I learned about women from 'er!
Then I was ordered to Burma,
Actin' in charge o' Bazar,
An' I got me a tiddy live 'eathen
Through buyin' supplies off 'er pa.
Funny an' yellow an' faithful --
Doll in a teacup she were,
But we lived on the square, like a true-married pair,
An' I learned about women from 'er!
Then we was shifted to Neemuch
(Or I might ha' been keepin' 'er now),
An' I took with a shiny she-devil,
The wife of a nigger at Mhow;
'Taught me the gipsy-folks' ~bolee~; [Slang.]
Kind o' volcano she were,
For she knifed me one night 'cause I wished she was white,
And I learned about women from 'er!
Then I come 'ome in the trooper,
'Long of a kid o' sixteen --
Girl from a convent at Meerut,
The straightest I ever 'ave seen.
Love at first sight was 'er trouble,
~She~ didn't know what it were;
An' I wouldn't do such, 'cause I liked 'er too much,
But -- I learned about women from 'er!
I've taken my fun where I've found it,
An' now I must pay for my fun,
For the more you 'ave known o' the others
The less will you settle to one;
An' the end of it's sittin' and thinkin',
An' dreamin' Hell-fires to see;
So be warned by my lot (which I know you will not),
An' learn about women from me!
What did the Colonel's Lady think?
Nobody never knew.
Somebody asked the Sergeant's wife,
~An'~ she told 'em true!
When you get to a man in the case,
They're like as a row of pins --
For the Colonel's Lady an' Judy O'Grady
Are sisters under their skins!
Scheme | Abcbxbxb cdxdxefe ghihjkxK xxfxgkxK lxgxdkek kmamgklk Ajcjhcxi xnxnccic |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111111 11111011 111111 1110111 1111110 1101011 1101101111 1110111 1110101010 110101 110111111 11111111 111111110 11111111 101111101011 11101101 1101111 1101101 1011111 11011011 10111111 1101010 1101101011 111011010 11110110 1001101 11110111 1101101 10110110 100110 111101101101 111011010 1111011 11111111 1111010110 01101011 1101111 1101010 111111111111 011011010 11110010 1101101 1101011 0111011 11111010 1101110 111011111011 111011010 110111111 11111111 1011111010 01111011 101111010 1111011 111111111111 11011011 11010101 1101 101011 11111 111101001 1110111 101010110010 1101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 2,406 |
Words | 459 |
Sentences | 18 |
Stanzas | 8 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 64 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 207 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 64 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 2:25 min read
- 601 Views
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"The Ladies" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33468/the-ladies>.
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