Analysis of The Heroine: A Bedtime Story



I undertook a journey in my mind
Turning back the spinning hands of time
To steal a glance into the visions of a child
To see perchance inside what wild
And gruesome monsters loomed
In the darker corners of his room
As quiet went the long dark night
Where ogres lay in wait just out of sight
To pluck the little sleeper from his bed
Through a wormhole drilled into his little head
The stillness soon began to swirl
And churn with creatures from another world
From out of nowhere they appeared
Things misshapen, unimagined, weird
A loathsome gremlin grabbed him by the throat
And this I heard it bellow, now I quote
“Come now for a bareback ride
On a wild-eyed nightmare to the other side”  
And off they sped, oh! what a terror
Careening crazed through a maze of error
Tumbling through the dim and awful gloom
Into a pit of fiendish demons, pestilence and doom
There in the dank and murky deep
In frightful throes of fitful sleep
The hiss of serpents hideous
A writhing mass ophidious
For which the hapless tyke let out a curdling scream
Entangled in the coils of a diabolic dream
All hope is lost, I had to look away
I could not bear to watch it end this way
But lo! his mother heard his anguished cries
Like a vengeful angel to his side, she flies
And with a dreadful oath as swift as breath
Defies the mighty Beast its kiss of Death
Bare knuckled pries the iron jaws of Hell
Snatches free her tiny prince from the Devil’s wicked spell
Now holds him safe and sound against her breast
Smooths his tousled locks with motherly caress
Coos him fast asleep again with lullaby
And stays the rest of night till dawn is nigh
I left them there in memory’s embrace
Never to forget my mom’s heroic grace
Of womankind and all maternal kin
Was none more fearless than my own through thick and thin


Scheme ABCCDEFFGGHIJJKKLLMMEENNOOPPQQRRSSTTUVWWXXYY
Poetic Form
Metre 101010011 101010111 110101010101 11010111 010101 001010111 11010111 111011111 1101010111 1011011101 01010111 0111010101 1111101 10100101 0101011101 0111110111 111011 1011110101 011111010 0101101110 1001010101 01011101010001 10010101 01011101 01110100 01011 11010111011 0100011011 1111111101 1111111111 1111011101 10101011111 0101011111 0101011111 1101010111 10101011010101 1111010101 1111110001 1110101110 0101111111 11110101 10101110101 11010101 111101111101
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,802
Words 338
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 44
Lines Amount 44
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 1,437
Words per stanza (avg) 333

About this poem

A recollection from childhood

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Written on September 15, 2023

Submitted by konpreah on October 10, 2023

1:41 min read
43

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