Lines to a Lady Weeping.Bk
Weep, daughter of a royal line,A Sire's disgrace, a realm's decay;Ah! happy if each tear of thineCould wash a Father's fault away!Weep--for thy tears are Virtue's tears--Auspicious to these suffering Isles;And be each drop in future yearsRepaid thee by thy People's smiles!
March, 1812.
About this text
Lines to a Lady Weeping.Bk is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3, Project Gutenberg ebook #21811; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Lord Byron, Lines to a Lady Weeping.Bk, in The Giaour, and Other Poems (1816), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21811, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-works-3/lines-to-a-lady-weeping-bk.html, id L23844.
Form and metre
Lines to a Lady Weeping.Bk is 9 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
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 ABABCDCD lineA · decayB · thineA · awayB · tearsC · islesD · yearsC · smilesD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Weep, daughter of a royal line, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| A Sire's disgrace, a realm's decay; | 8 | ··˘/··˘/ |
| Ah! happy if each tear of thine | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Could wash a Father's fault away! | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Weep--for thy tears are Virtue's tears-- | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Auspicious to these suffering Isles; | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| And be each drop in future years | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Repaid thee by thy People's smiles! | 8 | ˘/···/˘· |
| March, 1812. | 1 | · |
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.