There was an Old Man of Bohemia
There was an Old Man of Bohemia,Whose daughter was christened Euphemia;But one day, to his grief, she married a thief,Which grieved that Old Man of Bohemia.
About this text
There was an Old Man of Bohemia 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 of Bohemia, in A Book of Nonsense (1846), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13646, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lear-nonsense/there-was-an-old-man-of-bohemia.html, id L18160.
Form and metre
There was an Old Man of Bohemia 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. 78% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 3 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 bohemiaA · euphemiaA · thief · bohemiaA
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 of Bohemia, | 10 | ······˘/˘˘ |
| Whose daughter was christened Euphemia; | 10 | ·/˘·/˘˘/˘˘ |
| But one day, to his grief, she married a thief, | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| Which grieved that Old Man of Bohemia. | 10 | ······˘/˘˘ |
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.