To a Captious Critic
Dear critic, who my lightness so deplores,Would I might study to be prince of bores,Right wisely would I rule that dull estate--But, sir, I may not, till you abdicate.
Words in this poem
- abdicate v.
- To surrender or relinquish, as sovereign power; to withdraw definitely from filling or exercising, as a high office, station, dignity; as, to abdicate the throne, the crown, the papacy. [L. abdicatus, p.p. of abdicare; ab + dicare to proclaim, akin to dicere to say. See Diction.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To a Captious Critic is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Project Gutenberg ebook #18338; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Paul Laurence Dunbar, To a Captious Critic, in The Complete Poems (1893–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18338, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dunbar-poems/to-a-captious-critic.html, id L00740.
Form and metre
To a Captious Critic is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB deploresA · boresA · estateB · abdicateB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Dear critic, who my lightness so deplores, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| Would I might study to be prince of bores, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Right wisely would I rule that dull estate-- | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| But, sir, I may not, till you abdicate. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
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.