Chapter IX: The History of the Seven Young Guinea Pigs
"Lettuce! O lettuceLet us, O let us,O lettuce-leaves,O let us leave this tree, and eatLettuce, O let us, lettuce-leaves!"
About this text
Chapter IX: The History of the Seven Young Guinea Pigs is in the public domain. This text is taken from Nonsense Songs, Project Gutenberg ebook #13647; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edward Lear, Chapter IX: The History of the Seven Young Guinea Pigs, in Nonsense Songs (1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13647, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lear-nonsense-songs/chapter-ix-the-history-of-the-seven-young-guinea-pigs.html, id L16736.
Form and metre
Chapter IX: The History of the Seven Young Guinea Pigs is 5 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 6.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 AAB-B lettuceA · usA · leavesB · eat · leavesB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Lettuce! O lettuce | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| Let us, O let us, | 5 | ····· |
| O lettuce-leaves, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| O let us leave this tree, and eat | 8 | ········ |
| Lettuce, O let us, lettuce-leaves!" | 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.