The Lily
The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,The humble sheep a threat'ning horn:While the Lily white shall in love delight,Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Lily is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook #574; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Blake, The Lily, in Poems of William Blake (1783–1794), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #574, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/blake-poems/the-lily.html, id L02014.
Form and metre
The Lily is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 9.2 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 thornA · hornA · delightB · brightB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The modest Rose puts forth a thorn, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The humble sheep a threat'ning horn: | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| While the Lily white shall in love delight, | 10 | ··/˘····˘/ |
| Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright. | 11 | ········/˘· |
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.