On Her Majesty’s Visit to the City, 1844
We’ve heard of comets, blazing things,With “fear of change” perplexing Kings;But, lo! a novel sight and strange,A Queen who does not fear a ‘Change!
About this text
On Her Majesty’s Visit to the City, 1844 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, On Her Majesty’s Visit to the City, 1844, in Poems (1827–1845), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56712, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hood-poems/on-her-majesty-s-visit-to-the-city-1844.html, id L06810.
Form and metre
On Her Majesty’s Visit to the City, 1844 is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB thingsA · kingsA · strangeB · changeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| We’ve heard of comets, blazing things, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| With “fear of change” perplexing Kings; | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| But, lo! a novel sight and strange, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| A Queen who does not fear a ‘Change! | 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.