There was a Young Lady whose bonnet
There was a Young Lady whose bonnetCame untied when the birds sate upon it;But she said, "I don't care! all the birds in the airAre welcome to sit on my bonnet!"
Words in this poem
- sate v. t.
- To satisfy the desire or appetite of; to satiate; to glut; to surfeit. [Probably shortened fr. satiate: cf. L. satus full. See Satiate.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
There was a Young Lady whose bonnet 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 whose bonnet, in A Book of Nonsense (1846), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13646, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lear-nonsense/there-was-a-young-lady-whose-bonnet.html, id L18219.
Form and metre
There was a Young Lady whose bonnet 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. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 2 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 bonnetA · itA · air · bonnetA
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 whose bonnet | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| Came untied when the birds sate upon it; | 10 | ·˘/······· |
| But she said, "I don't care! all the birds in the air | 12 | ············ |
| Are welcome to sit on my bonnet!" | 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.