On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia
Borgia, thou once wert almost too augustAnd high for adoration; now thou'rt dust.All that remains of thee these plaits unfold,Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold.
About this text
On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia is in the public domain. This text is taken from Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection, Project Gutenberg ebook #21628; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walter Savage Landor, On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia, in Imaginary Conversations and Poems (1795–1863), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21628, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/landor-poems/on-seeing-a-hair-of-lucretia-borgia.html, id L12198.
Form and metre
On Seeing a Hair of Lucretia Borgia is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 augustA · dustA · unfoldB · goldB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Borgia, thou once wert almost too august | 10 | /˘···/··/˘ |
| And high for adoration; now thou'rt dust. | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| All that remains of thee these plaits unfold, | 10 | ··˘/····˘/ |
| Calm hair, meandering in pellucid gold. | 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.