The Raptures of Folly
Thou greybeard, old Wisdom! may boast of thy treasures;Give me with young Folly to live;I grant thee thy calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures,But Folly has raptures to give.
About this text
The Raptures of Folly 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 Raptures of Folly, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/the-raptures-of-folly.html, id L03314.
Form and metre
The Raptures of Folly is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 ABAB treasuresA · liveB · pleasuresA · giveB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Thou greybeard, old Wisdom! may boast of thy treasures; | 12 | ····/˘····/˘ |
| Give me with young Folly to live; | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| I grant thee thy calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures, | 12 | ·····/˘·/˘/˘ |
| But Folly has raptures to give. | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
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.