The Culprit Fay
"My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo!"Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales"I see old fairy land's miraculous show!"Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales,"Her Ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze,"And fairies, swarming--"
Words in this poem
- freakish a.
- Apt to change the mind suddenly; whimsical; capricious.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Culprit Fay is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #317; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Joseph Rodman Drake, The Culprit Fay, in The Culprit Fay and Other Poems (1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #317, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/drake-culprit-fay/the-culprit-fay.html, id L10274.
Form and metre
The Culprit Fay is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABAB-- loA · valesB · showA · galesB · breeze · swarming
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| "My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo! | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| "Instead of Anster's turnip-bearing vales | 10 | ˘/···/˘/˘· |
| "I see old fairy land's miraculous show! | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘· |
| "Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| "Her Ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, | 10 | ·········· |
| "And fairies, swarming--" | 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.