Verses Found in a Summer-House at Hales-Owen
When Dryden's fool, "unknowing what he sought,"His hours in whistling spent, "for want of thought,"This guiltless oaf his vacancy of senseSupplied, and amply too, by innocence:Did modern swains, possessed of Cymon's powers,In Cymon's manner waste their leisure hours,Th' offended guests would not, with blushing, seeThese fair green walks disgraced by infamy.Severe the fate of modern fools, alas!When vice and folly mark them as they pass.Like noxious reptiles o'er the whitened wall,The filth they leave still points out where they crawl.
Words in this poem
- guiltless a.
- Free from guilt; innocent.
- vacancy n.
- The quality or state of being vacant; emptiness; hence, freedom from employment; intermission; leisure; idleness; listlessness. [Cf. F. vacance.]
- amply adv.
- In an ample manner.
- crawl v. i.
- To move slowly by drawing the body along the ground, as a worm; to move slowly on hands and kness; to creep. [Dan. kravle, or Icel. krafla, to paw, scrabble with the hands; akin to Sw. kr to crawl; cf. LG. krabbeln, D. krabbelen to scratch.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Verses Found in a Summer-House at Hales-Owen 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, Verses Found in a Summer-House at Hales-Owen, in The Giaour, and Other Poems (1816), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21811, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-works-3/verses-found-in-a-summer-house-at-hales-owen.html, id L23850.
Form and metre
Verses Found in a Summer-House at Hales-Owen is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 83% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 AABBCC--DDEE soughtA · thoughtA · senseB · innocenceB · powersC · hoursC · see · infamy · alasD · passD · wallE · crawlE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When Dryden's fool, "unknowing what he sought," | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘··· |
| His hours in whistling spent, "for want of thought," | 10 | ·/·/˘····· |
| This guiltless oaf his vacancy of sense | 10 | ·/˘··/˘˘·· |
| Supplied, and amply too, by innocence: | 10 | ˘/·/˘··/˘˘ |
| Did modern swains, possessed of Cymon's powers, | 11 | ·/˘·˘/···/˘ |
| In Cymon's manner waste their leisure hours, | 11 | ···/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Th' offended guests would not, with blushing, see | 10 | ˘/˘····/˘· |
| These fair green walks disgraced by infamy. | 10 | ····˘/·/˘˘ |
| Severe the fate of modern fools, alas! | 10 | ˘/···/˘·˘/ |
| When vice and folly mark them as they pass. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Like noxious reptiles o'er the whitened wall, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| The filth they leave still points out where they crawl. | 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.