Andrew's Wiki
Country Dance

Country Dance

Content

• The goblins hob-nobbing with lovely girls is like Rossetti’s Goblin Market, eh? and all the mentions of fruits, of them spilling, of juices to be sucked
  • Except in this case the goblin and the girl do go have fun with each other
  • This is not about consequences, oh no, but about the fun (which Sitwell condescending and orientistically characterizes as the “Simple” emotions of “simple and primitive people” in her own introduction to the poems)

Form

• Playful rhythms reminiscent of Hopkins’ sprung rhythm: “That hobnailed goblin, that bobtailed Hob, / Said, ‘It is time I began to rob.’”
• Anapests used to emulate the turning of dancing:
  • “Are the gowns of the maids who dance to the pipe.”
• Alternations of two short rhyming lines (two or three syllables apiece) with very long iambic pentameter ones: keeping the heady feel of the country dance, going faster and slower, faster and slower, in a regular rhythm