There was a Young Lady whose nose
There was a Young Lady whose noseWas so long that it reached to her toes;So she hired an Old Lady, whose conduct was steady,To carry that wonderful nose.
About this text
There was a Young Lady whose nose 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 nose, 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-nose.html, id L18137.
Form and metre
There was a Young Lady whose nose 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. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 1 line ends 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 noseA · toesA · steady · noseA
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 nose | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Was so long that it reached to her toes; | 9 | ········· |
| So she hired an Old Lady, whose conduct was steady, | 14 | ··/˘··/˘·˘/·/˘ |
| To carry that wonderful nose. | 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.