The Henpecked Husband
Curs’d be the man, the poorest wretch in life,The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife!Who has no will but by her high permission,Who has not sixpence but in her possession;Who must to he, his dear friend’s secrets tell,Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell.Were such the wife had fallen to my part,I’d break her spirit or I’d break her heart;I’d charm her with the magic of a switch,I’d kiss her maids, and kick the perverse bitch.
Words in this poem
- bitch n.
- The female of the canine kind, as of the dog, wolf, and fox. [OE. biche, bicche, AS. bicce; cf. Icel. bikkja, G. betze, peize.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Henpecked Husband 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, The Henpecked Husband, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/the-henpecked-husband.html, id L03152.
Form and metre
The Henpecked Husband is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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--BBCCDD lifeA · wifeA · permission · possession · tellB · hellB · partC · heartC · switchD · bitchD
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Curs’d be the man, the poorest wretch in life, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The crouching vassal to a tyrant wife! | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Who has no will but by her high permission, | 11 | ········˘/˘ |
| Who has not sixpence but in her possession; | 11 | ···/˘···˘/˘ |
| Who must to he, his dear friend’s secrets tell, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Who dreads a curtain lecture worse than hell. | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Were such the wife had fallen to my part, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| I’d break her spirit or I’d break her heart; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| I’d charm her with the magic of a switch, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| I’d kiss her maids, and kick the perverse bitch. | 10 | ·······˘/· |
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.