The Sweets of Youth
Time was I liked a cheesecake well enough--All human children have a sweetish taste;I used to revel in a pie, or puff;Or tart--we all were Tartars in our youthTo meet with jam or jelly was good luck,All candies most complacently I crumped,A stick of liquorice was good to suck,And sugar was as often liked as lumped!On treacle’s “linkèd sweetness long drawn out,”Or honey I could feast like any fly;I thrilled when lollipops were hawked about;How pleased to compass hard-bake or bull’s-eye;How charmed if Fortune in my power castElecampane--but that campaign is past.
Words in this poem
- complacently adv.
- In a complacent manner.
- hawked a.
- Curved like a hawk's bill; crooked.
- bake v. t.
- To prepare, as food, by cooking in a dry heat, either in an oven or under coals, or on heated stone or metal; as, to bake bread, meat, apples.
- campaign n.
- An open field; a large, open plain without considerable hills. [F. campagne, It. campagna, fr. L. Campania the level country about Naples, fr. campus field. See Camp, and cf. Champaign, Champagne.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Sweets of Youth 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, The Sweets of Youth, in Poems (1827–1845), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56712, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hood-poems/the-sweets-of-youth.html, id L06790.
Form and metre
The Sweets of Youth is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.7 syllables. 14% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 A-A-B-B-CDCDEE enoughA · taste · puffA · youth · luckB · crumped · suckB · lumped · outC · flyD · aboutC · eyeD · castE · pastE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Time was I liked a cheesecake well enough-- | 10 | ·····/··˘/ |
| All human children have a sweetish taste; | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| I used to revel in a pie, or puff; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Or tart--we all were Tartars in our youth | 10 | ·····/˘·/· |
| To meet with jam or jelly was good luck, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| All candies most complacently I crumped, | 9 | ·/˘·˘/˘·· |
| A stick of liquorice was good to suck, | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| And sugar was as often liked as lumped! | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| On treacle’s “linkèd sweetness long drawn out,” | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Or honey I could feast like any fly; | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| I thrilled when lollipops were hawked about; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| How pleased to compass hard-bake or bull’s-eye; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| How charmed if Fortune in my power cast | 9 | ···/˘··/· |
| Elecampane--but that campaign is past. | 10 | ······˘/·· |
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.