Clendenin's Lament
While bridal knots are being tiedAnd bridal meats are being basted,I shiver in the cold outsideAnd pine for joys I've never tasted.
Oh, what's a nomination worth,When you have labored months to get itIf, all at once, with heartless mirth,The cruel senator's upset it?
Fate weaves me such a toilsome way,My modest wisdom may not ken it--But, all the same, a plague I sayUpon that stingy, hostile senate!
Words in this poem
- nomination n.
- The act of naming or nominating; designation of a person as a candidate for office; the power of nominating; the state of being nominated. [L. nominatio: cf. F. nomination.]
- heartless a.
- Without a heart.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Clendenin's Lament is in the public domain. This text is taken from Hoosier Lyrics, Project Gutenberg ebook #36150; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Eugene Field, Clendenin's Lament, in Hoosier Lyrics (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36150, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/field-poems/clendenin-s-lament.html, id L11587.
Form and metre
Clendenin's Lament is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.4 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 tiedA · bastedB · outsideA · tastedB
- 2 ABAB worthA · itB · mirthA · itB
- 3 ABAB wayA · itB · sayA · senateB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| While bridal knots are being tied | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And bridal meats are being basted, | 9 | ·/˘··/˘/˘ |
| I shiver in the cold outside | 8 | ·/˘···// |
| And pine for joys I've never tasted. | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Oh, what's a nomination worth, | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| When you have labored months to get it | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| If, all at once, with heartless mirth, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The cruel senator's upset it? | 8 | ·//˘˘˘/· |
| Fate weaves me such a toilsome way, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| My modest wisdom may not ken it-- | 9 | ·/˘/˘···· |
| But, all the same, a plague I say | 8 | ········ |
| Upon that stingy, hostile senate! | 9 | ···/˘/˘/˘ |
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.