The Ledbury Road
THE road that leads to LedburyOh! it be such a pretty way,As far as Wales you’ll likely see,Suppose the month be May.
The little birds they sing and sing,The blackbirds and the thrushes do,And after rain in early SpringThe grass looks green and new.
I wish that I were walking there,Along that road so still and wide,A lad without a thought or care,My true-love at my side!
About this text
The Ledbury Road 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, The Ledbury Road, in Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #50591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hall-three-counties/the-ledbury-road.html, id L22673.
Form and metre
The Ledbury Road is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 -A-A ledbury · wayA · see · mayA
- 2 ABAB singA · doB · springA · newB
- 3 ABAB thereA · wideB · careA · sideB
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 road that leads to Ledbury | 8 | ········ |
| Oh! it be such a pretty way, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| As far as Wales you’ll likely see, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Suppose the month be May. | 6 | ˘/···· |
| The little birds they sing and sing, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The blackbirds and the thrushes do, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And after rain in early Spring | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The grass looks green and new. | 6 | ······ |
| I wish that I were walking there, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Along that road so still and wide, | 8 | ˘/······ |
| A lad without a thought or care, | 8 | ········ |
| My true-love at my side! | 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.