Thomalin
Where is every piping ladThat the fields are not ycladWith their milk-white sheep?
Tell me: is it holiday,Or if in the month of MayUse they long to sleep?
Words in this poem
- piping a.
- Playing on a musical pipe. [From Pipe, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Thomalin is in the public domain. This text is taken from Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, Selected Poetry by George Wither, and Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock), Project Gutenberg ebook #22001; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Nicholas Breton, Thomalin, in Pastoral Poems and Selected Poetry (1597–1604), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22001, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/breton-poems/thomalin.html, id L08864.
Form and metre
Thomalin is 6 lines in 2 stanzas of 3 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.5 syllables.
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 AA- ladA · ycladA · sheep
- 2 AA- holidayA · mayA · sleep
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Where is every piping lad | 8 | ··/˘˘/˘· |
| That the fields are not yclad | 7 | ······· |
| With their milk-white sheep? | 5 | ····· |
| Tell me: is it holiday, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Or if in the month of May | 7 | ······· |
| Use they long to sleep? | 5 | ····· |
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.