Hapless
Hapless, hapless, I must beAll the hours of life I see,Since my foolish nurse did onceBed me on her leggen bones;Since my mother did not weelTo snip my nails with blades of steel.Had they laid me on a pillowIn a cot of water willow,Had they bitten finger and thumb,Not to such ill hap I had come.
Words in this poem
- hapless a.
- Without hap or luck; luckless; unfortunate; unlucky; unhappy; as, hapless youth; hapless maid.
- weel
- A kind of trap or snare for fish, made of twigs. Carew. [Prov. E. weel, weal, a wicker basket to catch eels; prob. akin to willow, and so called as made of willow twigs.]
- snip v. t.
- To cut off the nip or neb of, or to cut off at once with shears or scissors; to clip off suddenly; to nip; hence, to break off; to snatch away. [D. snippen; akin to G. schnippen.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hapless 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, Hapless, in Peacock Pie (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3753, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-peacock-pie/hapless.html, id L12571.
Form and metre
Hapless is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 60% of the lines. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.5 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 40% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, 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 AA--BB--CC beA · seeA · once · bones · weelB · steelB · pillow · willow · thumbC · comeC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hapless, hapless, I must be | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| All the hours of life I see, | 7 | ··/···· |
| Since my foolish nurse did once | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Bed me on her leggen bones; | 7 | ······· |
| Since my mother did not weel | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| To snip my nails with blades of steel. | 8 | ········ |
| Had they laid me on a pillow | 8 | ······/˘ |
| In a cot of water willow, | 8 | ····/˘/· |
| Had they bitten finger and thumb, | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Not to such ill hap I had come. | 8 | ········ |
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.