On a Beautiful Youth Struck Blind with Lightning
SURE ’twas by Providence design’d,Rather in pity, than in hate,That he should be, like Cupid, blind,To save him from Narcissus’ fate.
Words in this poem
- cupid
- The god of love, son of Venus; usually represented as a naked, winged boy with bow and arrow. [L.Cupido, fr. cupido desire, desire of love, fr. cupidus. See Cupidity.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On a Beautiful Youth Struck Blind with Lightning is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Project Gutenberg ebook #3545; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Oliver Goldsmith, On a Beautiful Youth Struck Blind with Lightning, in Poems (1764–1774), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3545, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/goldsmith-poems/on-a-beautiful-youth-struck-blind-with-lightning.html, id L00422.
Form and metre
On a Beautiful Youth Struck Blind with Lightning is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 82% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
See other poems in iambic 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 ABAB design'dA · hateB · blindA · fateB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| SURE ’twas by Providence design’d, | 8 | ···/˘˘˘/ |
| Rather in pity, than in hate, | 8 | /˘·/˘··· |
| That he should be, like Cupid, blind, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| To save him from Narcissus’ fate. | 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.