Chicken
Clapping her platter stood plump Bess,And all across the greenCame scampering in, on wing and claw,Chicken fat and lean:Dorking, Spaniard, Cochin China,Bantams sleek and small,Like feathers blown in a great wind,They came at Bessie's call.
Words in this poem
- platter n.
- One who plats or braids. [From Plat to braid.]
- spaniard n.
- A native or inhabitant of Spain.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chicken 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, Chicken, in Peacock Pie (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3753, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-peacock-pie/chicken.html, id L12567.
Form and metre
Chicken is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -A-A-B-B bess · greenA · claw · leanA · china · smallB · wind · callB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Clapping her platter stood plump Bess, | 8 | /˘·/˘··· |
| And all across the green | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| Came scampering in, on wing and claw, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Chicken fat and lean: | 5 | /˘··· |
| Dorking, Spaniard, Cochin China, | 8 | ··/˘/˘/˘ |
| Bantams sleek and small, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Like feathers blown in a great wind, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| They came at Bessie's call. | 6 | ···/˘· |
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.