Analysis of Crabs
Arthur Bayldon 1865 – 1958
(On a Queensland Beach)
Poisonous, bloated, crab-like shapes
Crawl in gangs around these capes-
Stopping here and feeding there,
Listening, crawling everywhere;
Searching every rotten weed
With a frothing, wild-eyed greed:
Fighting o'er a lump of scurf
Or a red boil of the earth;
Thrusting up their writhing claws
To their grinning, fiend-like maws.
And these horrid creatures wet
With a thick, unwholesome sweat
Have most hideous banquets here
On the poor drowned marineer.
Down they hurry eagerly
Chittering all the way with glee:
They have smelt the tainted air
From that body festering there.
How they twitch their claws and pry
Into each distorted eye;
How they spit on him with spite
As their nippers pinch and bite;
How they strip him clean and bare,
Leaving not a morsel there,
Till they're gorged and all squat near
Fleshless remnant with a leer.
When the billows near them roll
Each will scope himself a hole
In the mud-banks, and therein
Sleep like an embodied sin.
***
In the world so crass and blind
Human crabs feed on their kind:
Glutted creatures that devour
All that fall within their power;
Skulking each near his own hole,
They smell out each human soul
Tossed up on Life's stony shore,
Weary, friendless, weak and poor.
Scheme | X AABBCCXXXADDXBEEBBFFGGBBXBHHII JJKKHHXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Etheree (30%) |
Metre | 1011 10010111 1010111 1010101 1001010 10100101 101111 10100111 1011101 1011101 1110111 0110101 10111 11100101 10111 1110100 110111 1110101 11101001 1111101 0110101 1111111 111101 1111101 1010101 1110111 110101 1010111 1110101 0011001 1110101 1 0011101 1011111 10101010 11101110 111111 1111101 1111101 101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,212 |
Words | 214 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 1, 30, 9 |
Lines Amount | 40 |
Letters per line (avg) | 25 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 329 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 71 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 07, 2023
- 1:05 min read
- 57 Views
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"Crabs" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/3791/crabs>.
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