Wales
The natives of the land of WalesAre not a very truthful lot,And the imagination failsTo paint the language they have got;Bettws-y-coed-llan-dud-nod-Dolgelly-rhiwlas-cwn-wm-dod!
About this text
Wales is in the public domain. This text is taken from Verse and Worse, Project Gutenberg ebook #36702; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Harry Graham, Wales, in Verse and Worse (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36702, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/graham-verse-and-worse/wales.html, id L23297.
Form and metre
Wales is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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-- walesA · lotB · failsA · gotB · nod · dod
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The natives of the land of Wales | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Are not a very truthful lot, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And the imagination fails | 8 | ··˘·˘/˘· |
| To paint the language they have got; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Bettws-y-coed-llan-dud-nod- | 7 | ··/···· |
| Dolgelly-rhiwlas-cwn-wm-dod! | 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.