Tired Tim
Poor Tired Tim! It's sad for him.He lags the long bright morning through,Ever so tired of nothing to do;He moons and mopes the livelong day,Nothing to think about, nothing to say;Up to bed with his candle to creep,Too tired to yawn, too tired to sleep:Poor Tired Tim! It's sad for him.
Words in this poem
- livelong a.
- Whole; entire; long in passing; -- used of time, as day or night, in adverbial phrases, and usually with a sense of tediousness. [For lifelong. Cf. Lifelong.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Tired Tim 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, Tired Tim, in Peacock Pie (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3753, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-peacock-pie/tired-tim.html, id L12561.
Form and metre
Tired Tim is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 75% of the lines. The metre is dactylic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in dactylic 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 ABBCCDDA himA · throughB · doB · dayC · sayC · creepD · sleepD · himA
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 dactylic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Poor Tired Tim! It's sad for him. | 7 | ·/····· |
| He lags the long bright morning through, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Ever so tired of nothing to do; | 8 | /·/·/˘·· |
| He moons and mopes the livelong day, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Nothing to think about, nothing to say; | 10 | /˘····/˘·· |
| Up to bed with his candle to creep, | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Too tired to yawn, too tired to sleep: | 8 | ·/···/·· |
| Poor Tired Tim! It's sad for him. | 7 | ·/····· |
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.