The Beggar's Quatrain
Blind, as was Homer; as Belisarius, blind,But one weak child to guide his vision dim.The hand which dealt him bread, in pity kind--He'll never see; God sees it, though, for him.
H.L.C., "London Society."
About this text
The Beggar's Quatrain is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, the various hands translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Victor Hugo, The Beggar's Quatrain, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/the-beggar-s-quatrain.html, id L26867.
Form and metre
The Beggar's Quatrain is 5 lines in 2 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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 ABAB blindA · dimB · kindA · himB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Blind, as was Homer; as Belisarius, blind, | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| But one weak child to guide his vision dim. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The hand which dealt him bread, in pity kind-- | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| He'll never see; God sees it, though, for him. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| H.L.C., "London Society." | 9 | ···/˘˘/˘˘ |
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.