Bread and Cherries
'Cherries, ripe cherries!'The old woman cried,In her snowy white apron,And basket beside;And the little boys came,Eyes shining, cheeks red,To buy a bag of cherries,To eat with their bread.
Words in this poem
- snowy a.
- White like snow.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bread and Cherries is in the public domain. This text is taken from Peacock Pie, a Book of Rhymes, Project Gutenberg ebook #3753; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walter de la Mare, Bread and Cherries, in Peacock Pie (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3753, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-peacock-pie/bread-and-cherries.html, id L12569.
Form and metre
Bread and Cherries is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 83% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.6 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 AB-B-CAC cherriesA · criedB · apron · besideB · came · redC · cherriesA · breadC
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| 'Cherries, ripe cherries!' | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| The old woman cried, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| In her snowy white apron, | 7 | ··/˘·/˘ |
| And basket beside; | 5 | ·/˘·/ |
| And the little boys came, | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Eyes shining, cheeks red, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| To buy a bag of cherries, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| To eat with their bread. | 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.