Chapter VII: The History of the Seven Young Geese
"Plum-pudding Flea,Plum-pudding Flea,Wherever you be,Oh! come to our tree,And listen, oh! listen, oh! listen to me!"
Words in this poem
- wherever adv.
- At or in whatever place; wheresoever.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chapter VII: The History of the Seven Young Geese 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 VII: The History of the Seven Young Geese, in Nonsense Songs (1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13647, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lear-nonsense-songs/chapter-vii-the-history-of-the-seven-young-geese.html, id L16735.
Form and metre
Chapter VII: The History of the Seven Young Geese is 5 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines. The lines average 6.0 syllables.
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 AAAAA fleaA · fleaA · beA · treeA · meA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Plum-pudding Flea, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Plum-pudding Flea, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Wherever you be, | 5 | ˘/˘·· |
| Oh! come to our tree, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And listen, oh! listen, oh! listen to me!" | 11 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘·· |
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.