The Maid’s Remonstrance
Never wedding, ever wooing,Still a love-lorn heart pursuing,Read you not the wrong you’re doingIn my cheek’s pale hue?All my life with sorrow strewing,Wed, or cease to woo.
Rivals banished, bosoms plighted,Still our days are disunited;Now the lamp of hope is lighted,Now half quenched appears,Damped, and wavering, and benighted,Midst my sighs and tears.
Charms you call your dearest blessing,Lips that thrill at your caressing,Eyes a mutual soul confessing,Soon you’ll make them growDim, and worthless your possessingNot with age, but woe!
Words in this poem
- lorn a.
- Lost; undone; ruined. [Strong p. p. of Lose. See Lose, Forlorn.]
- strewing n.
- The act of scattering or spreading.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Maid’s Remonstrance is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Thomas Campbell, Project Gutenberg ebook #59788; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Campbell, The Maid’s Remonstrance, in The Pleasures of Hope, and Other Poems (1824), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59788, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campbell-poems/the-maid-s-remonstrance.html, id L24427.
Form and metre
The Maid’s Remonstrance is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AAABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 AAABAB wooingA · pursuingA · doingA · hueB · strewingA · wooB
- 2 AAABAB plightedA · disunitedA · lightedA · appearsB · benightedA · tearsB
- 3 AAABAB blessingA · caressingA · confessingA · growB · possessingA · woeB
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Never wedding, ever wooing, | 8 | /˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| Still a love-lorn heart pursuing, | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Read you not the wrong you’re doing | 8 | ······/˘ |
| In my cheek’s pale hue? | 5 | ····· |
| All my life with sorrow strewing, | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Wed, or cease to woo. | 5 | ····· |
| Rivals banished, bosoms plighted, | 8 | /˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| Still our days are disunited; | 8 | ·/······ |
| Now the lamp of hope is lighted, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Now half quenched appears, | 5 | ···˘/ |
| Damped, and wavering, and benighted, | 9 | ··/˘˘·˘/˘ |
| Midst my sighs and tears. | 5 | ····· |
| Charms you call your dearest blessing, | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Lips that thrill at your caressing, | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Eyes a mutual soul confessing, | 9 | ··/˘˘·˘/˘ |
| Soon you’ll make them grow | 5 | ····· |
| Dim, and worthless your possessing | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
| Not with age, but woe! | 5 | ····· |
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.