The Broken Dish
What's life but full of care and doubtWith all its fine humanities,With parasols we walk about,Long pigtails, and such vanities.
We plant pomegranate trees and things,And go in gardens sporting,With toys and fans of peacocks' wings,To painted ladies courting.
We gather flowers of every hue,And fish in boats for fishes,Build summer-houses painted blue,--But life's as frail as dishes!
Walking about their groves of trees,Blue bridges and blue rivers,How little thought them two Chinese,They'd both be smashed to shivers!
About this text
The Broken Dish is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood, Project Gutenberg ebook #15652; 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 Broken Dish, in The Song of the Shirt, and Other Poems (1826–1845), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15652, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hood-poetical-works/the-broken-dish.html, id L20207.
Form and metre
The Broken Dish is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 3 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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- doubtA · humanities · aboutA · vanities
- 2 ABAB thingsA · sportingB · wingsA · courtingB
- 3 ABAB hueA · fishesB · blueA · dishesB
- 4 ABAB treesA · riversB · chineseA · shiversB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| What's life but full of care and doubt | 8 | ········ |
| With all its fine humanities, | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
| With parasols we walk about, | 8 | ········ |
| Long pigtails, and such vanities. | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| We plant pomegranate trees and things, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| And go in gardens sporting, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| With toys and fans of peacocks' wings, | 8 | ·····/·· |
| To painted ladies courting. | 7 | ·/˘/˘/˘ |
| We gather flowers of every hue, | 8 | ·/˘/·/˘· |
| And fish in boats for fishes, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Build summer-houses painted blue,-- | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| But life's as frail as dishes! | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Walking about their groves of trees, | 8 | /˘······ |
| Blue bridges and blue rivers, | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| How little thought them two Chinese, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| They'd both be smashed to shivers! | 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.