There was an Old Man in a pew
There was an Old Man in a pew,Whose waistcoat was spotted with blue;But he tore it in pieces, to give to his Nieces,That cheerful Old Man in a pew.
Words in this poem
- tore n.
- The dead grass that remains on mowing land in winter and spring. Mortimer. [Probably from the root of tear; cf. W. tór a break, cut, tóri to break, cut.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
There was an Old Man in a pew 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 an Old Man in a pew, in A Book of Nonsense (1846), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13646, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lear-nonsense/there-was-an-old-man-in-a-pew.html, id L18168.
Form and metre
There was an Old Man in a pew 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 9.2 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 pewA · blueA · nieces · pewA
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 an Old Man in a pew, | 8 | ········ |
| Whose waistcoat was spotted with blue; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| But he tore it in pieces, to give to his Nieces, | 13 | ·····/˘····/˘ |
| That cheerful Old Man in a pew. | 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.