There was a Young Lady of Sweden
There was a Young Lady of Sweden,Who went by the slow train to Weedon;When they cried, "Weedon Station!" she made no observation,But thought she should go back to Sweden.
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
There was a Young Lady of Sweden is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Book of Nonsense, Project Gutenberg ebook #13646; 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, There was a Young Lady of Sweden, in A Book of Nonsense (1846), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13646, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lear-nonsense/there-was-a-young-lady-of-sweden.html, id L18191.
Form and metre
There was a Young Lady of Sweden is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in anapaestic trimeter. 77% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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 AA-A swedenA · weedonA · observation · swedenA
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 anapaestic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| There was a Young Lady of Sweden, | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| Who went by the slow train to Weedon; | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| When they cried, "Weedon Station!" she made no observation, | 14 | ···/˘/˘····˘/˘ |
| But thought she should go back to Sweden. | 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.