Change of Ministry
As human fashions change about,The reign of Fools should now begin,For when the Wigs are going outThe Naturals are coming in.
About this text
Change of Ministry is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Comic Poems of Thomas Hood A New and Complete Edition, Project Gutenberg ebook #56712; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Hood, Change of Ministry, in Poems (1827–1845), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56712, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hood-poems/change-of-ministry.html, id L06815.
Form and metre
Change of Ministry is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
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 aboutA · beginB · outA · inB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| As human fashions change about, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| The reign of Fools should now begin, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| For when the Wigs are going out | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The Naturals are coming in. | 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.