Triolet: All Women Born Are So Perverse
All women born are so perverseNo man need boast their love possessing.If nought seem better, nothing's worse:All women born are so perverse.From Adam's wife, that proved a curseThough God had made her for a blessing,All women born are so perverseNo man need boast their love possessing.
About this text
Triolet: All Women Born Are So Perverse is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Excluding the Eight Dramas, Project Gutenberg ebook #37804; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Bridges, Triolet: All Women Born Are So Perverse, in The Growth of Love, and Other Poems (1873–1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #37804, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bridges-shorter-poems/triolet-all-women-born-are-so-perverse.html, id L20536.
Form and metre
Triolet: All Women Born Are So Perverse is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAAABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See 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 ABAAABAB perverseA · possessingB · worseA · perverseA · curseA · blessingB · perverseA · possessingB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| All women born are so perverse | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| No man need boast their love possessing. | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| If nought seem better, nothing's worse: | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| All women born are so perverse. | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| From Adam's wife, that proved a curse | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Though God had made her for a blessing, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| All women born are so perverse | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| No man need boast their love possessing. | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
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.