Lines Written Beneath a Picture
Dear object of defeated care!Though now of Love and thee bereft,To reconcile me with despairThine image and my tears are left.
'Tis said with Sorrow Time can cope;But this I feel can ne'er be true:For by the death-blow of my HopeMy Memory immortal grew.
About this text
Lines Written Beneath a Picture 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 Written Beneath a Picture, in The Giaour, and Other Poems (1816), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21811, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-works-3/lines-written-beneath-a-picture.html, id L23836.
Form and metre
Lines Written Beneath a Picture is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 ABAB careA · bereftB · despairA · leftB
- 2 ABAB copeA · trueB · hopeA · grewB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dear object of defeated care! | 8 | ·/˘·˘/˘· |
| Though now of Love and thee bereft, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| To reconcile me with despair | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Thine image and my tears are left. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| 'Tis said with Sorrow Time can cope; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| But this I feel can ne'er be true: | 8 | ········ |
| For by the death-blow of my Hope | 8 | ········ |
| My Memory immortal grew. | 8 | ·/˘˘˘/˘· |
On this poem
In a curious work of doubtful authority, entitled, The Life, Writings, Opinions and Times of the Right Hon. G. G. Noel Byron, London, 1825 (iii. 123-132), there is a long and circumstantial narrative of a "defeated" attempt of Byron's to rescue a Georgian girl, whom he had bought in the slave-market for 800 piastres, from a life of shame and degradation. It is improbable that these verses suggested the story; and, on the other hand, the story, if true, does afford some clue to the verses.]
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.