On Paunch, a Parasite
Paunch talks against good liquor to excess,And then about his raving Patroness;And then he talks about himself. And thenWe turn the conversation on to men.
Words in this poem
- paunch n.
- The belly and its contents; the abdomen; also, the first stomach, or rumen, of ruminants. See Rumen. [OF. panch, pance, F. panse, L. pantex, panticis.]
- patroness n.
- A female patron or helper. [Cf. F. patronnesse.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On Paunch, a Parasite is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sonnets and Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #60663; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Hilaire Belloc, On Paunch, a Parasite, in Sonnets and Verse (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60663, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/belloc-sonnets-verse/on-paunch-a-parasite.html, id L21711.
Form and metre
On Paunch, a Parasite is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 AABB excessA · patronessA · thenB · menB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Paunch talks against good liquor to excess, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| And then about his raving Patroness; | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| And then he talks about himself. And then | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| We turn the conversation on to men. | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.