In the City
OH! City girls are pale-like,And proud-like, and cold-like,And nineteen out of twentyHave never been our way.I tells them of the tall hills,The green hills, the old hills,Where hawthorns are a-blossoming,And thrushes call all day.
Oh! London is a fine place,A big place, a rich place,Where nineteen out of twentyOf all the girls are fair.But well I knows a white road,A long road, a straight road,That leads me into Bosbury;I’m wishing I was there!
About this text
In the City is in the public domain. This text is taken from Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #50591; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Radclyffe Hall, In the City, in Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #50591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hall-three-counties/in-the-city.html, id L22667.
Form and metre
In the City is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AA-BCC-B likeA · likeA · twenty · wayB · hillsC · hillsC · blossoming · dayB
- 2 AA-BCC-B placeA · placeA · twenty · fairB · roadC · roadC · bosbury · thereB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| OH! City girls are pale-like, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| And proud-like, and cold-like, | 6 | ······ |
| And nineteen out of twenty | 7 | ·//··/˘ |
| Have never been our way. | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| I tells them of the tall hills, | 7 | ······· |
| The green hills, the old hills, | 6 | ······ |
| Where hawthorns are a-blossoming, | 8 | ·/···/˘˘ |
| And thrushes call all day. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Oh! London is a fine place, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| A big place, a rich place, | 6 | ······ |
| Where nineteen out of twenty | 7 | ·//··/˘ |
| Of all the girls are fair. | 6 | ······ |
| But well I knows a white road, | 7 | ······· |
| A long road, a straight road, | 6 | ······ |
| That leads me into Bosbury; | 8 | ········ |
| I’m wishing I was there! | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.