The Lady Visitor in the Pauper Ward
Why do you break upon this old, cool peace,This painted peace of ours,With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese,With garish flowers?Why do you churn smooth waters rough again,Selfish old skin-and-bone?Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain,Leave us alone.
Words in this poem
- garish a.
- Showy; dazzling; ostentatious; attracting or exciting attention. [Cf. OE. gauren to stare; of uncertain origin. Cf. gairish.]
- churn n.
- A vessel in which milk or cream is stirred, beaten, or otherwise agitated (as by a plunging or revolving dasher) in order to separete the oily globules from the other parts, and obtain butter. [OE. chirne, cherne, AS. ceren, cyrin; akin to D. karn, Dan. kierne. See Churn, v. t.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Lady Visitor in the Pauper Ward is in the public domain. This text is taken from Fairies and Fusiliers, Project Gutenberg ebook #10122; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Graves, The Lady Visitor in the Pauper Ward, in Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10122, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/graves-fairies/the-lady-visitor-in-the-pauper-ward.html, id L02440.
Form and metre
The Lady Visitor in the Pauper Ward is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCD. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.6 syllables. 2 lines end 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 ABABCDCD peaceA · oursB · geeseA · flowersB · againC · boneD · painC · aloneD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Why do you break upon this old, cool peace, | 10 | ·········· |
| This painted peace of ours, | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| With garish flowers? | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| Why do you churn smooth waters rough again, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Selfish old skin-and-bone? | 6 | /˘···· |
| Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain, | 9 | ···//˘··· |
| Leave us alone. | 4 | ··˘/ |
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.