On Hearing It Asserted Falsehood
That there is a falsehood in his looks,I must and will deny:They tell their Master is a knave,And sure they do not lie.
Words in this poem
- knave n.
- A boy; especially, a boy servant. Wyclif. [OE., boy, servant, knave, AS. cnafa boy, youth; cf. AS. cnapa boy, youth, D. kna, G. knabe boy, knappe esquire, Icel. knapi, Sw. knape esquire, knäfvel knave.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On Hearing It Asserted Falsehood 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 Hearing It Asserted Falsehood, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/on-hearing-it-asserted-falsehood.html, id L03377.
Form and metre
On Hearing It Asserted Falsehood 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. 100% 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.
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 -A-A looks · denyA · knave · lieA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| That there is a falsehood in his looks, | 9 | ····/···· |
| I must and will deny: | 6 | ····˘/ |
| They tell their Master is a knave, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And sure they do not lie. | 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.