On Being Shewn a Beautiful Country Seat
We grant they’re thine, those beauties all,So lovely in our eye;Keep them, thou eunuch, Cardoness,For others to enjoy!
About this text
On Being Shewn a Beautiful Country Seat is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, Project Gutenberg ebook #1279; 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 Burns, On Being Shewn a Beautiful Country Seat, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/on-being-shewn-a-beautiful-country-seat.html, id L03376.
Form and metre
On Being Shewn a Beautiful Country Seat is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| We grant they’re thine, those beauties all, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| So lovely in our eye; | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| Keep them, thou eunuch, Cardoness, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| For others to enjoy! | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
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.