Analysis of His Last Hanukkah
Neil McLeod 1947 (Oxford)
His Last Hanukkah
Sam Lippman, a patient for 25 years, died after falling backwards on the first night at age eighty nine.
Permit me please to raise a glass to Sam
He was, in life, an ornery fellow,
One thing that I'm sure was in his plan
He wasn't going to let age make him mellow.
Teeth to the task he never would surrender,
It would take an act of God to stop him driving.
You can leave your canes a'standing in the hallway
Contempt for ailments that's what kept him thriving.
And should a passing thankful-beggar greet him,
In glowing terms for some kind act he'd done,
He'd wave it off and say that it was nothing;
Helping was his way of having fun.
And if there was a product or a service
The price of which was making you dig deeper,
You should take leaf from Sam's good book,
Trust me! he would always get it cheaper.
He was like the lamp that kept on burning,
With optimism meeting come what may.
Doggedly determined he would leave his cane behind
And that's what got him on the final day.
So let me take my turn with each of you
From where I have been waiting on the bench,
I ask you just to stand and toast his memory
“The man we loved - he was a real mensch.”
Scheme | XX XAXA BCDC XECE XBXB CDXD XXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11100 110010111101010101111101 0111110111 1101110010 111111011 110101111110 11011101010 111111111110 11111010001 01110111110 01010101011 0101111111 11110111110 101111101 01110101010 01111101110 11111111 111111110 1110111110 110010111 1000101111101 0111110101 1111111111 1111110101 111111011100 011111011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,150 |
Words | 231 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 2, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 26 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 130 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 33 |
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"His Last Hanukkah" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 19 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/73556/his-last-hanukkah>.
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