Out of the Old House, Nancy
Out of the old house, Nancy--moved up into the new;All the hurry and worry is just as good as through.Only a bounden duty remains for you and I--And that's to stand on the door-step, here, and bid theold house good-bye.
Words in this poem
- bounden a.
- Bound; fastened by bonds. [Old. p. p. of bind.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Out of the Old House, Nancy is in the public domain. This text is taken from Farm Ballads, Project Gutenberg ebook #9500; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Will Carleton, Out of the Old House, Nancy, in Farm Ballads (1873), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9500, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carleton-farm-ballads/out-of-the-old-house-nancy.html, id L23268.
Form and metre
Out of the Old House, Nancy is 5 lines in a single stanza.
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 AAB-B newA · throughA · iB · the · byeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Out of the old house, Nancy--moved up into the new; | 13 | ·····/˘······ |
| All the hurry and worry is just as good as through. | 13 | ··/˘·/˘······ |
| Only a bounden duty remains for you and I-- | 13 | /˘·/˘/˘˘/···· |
| And that's to stand on the door-step, here, and bid the | 12 | ············ |
| old house good-bye. | 4 | ···· |
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.