Carmen CVI: The Auctioneer and the Fair Boy
When with a pretty-faced boy we see one playing the Crier,What can we wot except longs he for selling the same?
About this text
Carmen CVI: The Auctioneer and the Fair Boy is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Carmina, Project Gutenberg ebook #20732, the Richard Burton translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Catullus, Carmen CVI: The Auctioneer and the Fair Boy, in The Carmina (1894), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #20732, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/catullus-carmina/carmen-cvi-the-auctioneer-and-the-fair-boy.html, id L13886.
Form and metre
Carmen CVI: The Auctioneer and the Fair Boy is 2 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 13.5 syllables.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When with a pretty-faced boy we see one playing the Crier, | 14 | ···/˘·····/˘·/ |
| What can we wot except longs he for selling the same? | 13 | ·········/˘·· |
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.