To the Beautiful Miss Eliza J—N
How, Liberty! girl, can it be by thee nam’d?Equality too! hussey, art not asham’d?Free and Equal indeed, while mankind thou enchainest,And over their hearts a proud Despot so reignest.
About this text
To the Beautiful Miss Eliza J—N 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, To the Beautiful Miss Eliza J—N, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/to-the-beautiful-miss-eliza-j-n.html, id L03373.
Form and metre
To the Beautiful Miss Eliza J—N is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 11.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB nam'dA · asham'dA · enchainestB · reignestB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| How, Liberty! girl, can it be by thee nam’d? | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Equality too! hussey, art not asham’d? | 10 | ˘/˘·/˘··˘/ |
| Free and Equal indeed, while mankind thou enchainest, | 13 | ··/˘˘/·//···· |
| And over their hearts a proud Despot so reignest. | 11 | ······/˘·/˘ |
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.