There was an Old Man of Leghorn
There was an Old Man of Leghorn,The smallest that ever was born;But quickly snapt up he was once by a Puppy,Who devoured that Old Man of Leghorn.
Words in this poem
- leghorn n.
- A straw plaiting used for bonnets and hats, made from the straw of a particular kind of wheat, grown for the purpose in Tuscany, Italy; -- so called from Leghorn, the place of exportation.
- puppy n.
- The young of a canine animal, esp. of the common dog; a whelp. [F. poupée doll, puppet. See Puppet, and cf. Pup, n.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
There was an Old Man of Leghorn 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 Leghorn, 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-leghorn.html, id L18167.
Form and metre
There was an Old Man of Leghorn 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. 75% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 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 leghornA · bornA · puppy · leghornA
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 Leghorn, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| The smallest that ever was born; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| But quickly snapt up he was once by a Puppy, | 12 | ·/˘·······/˘ |
| Who devoured that Old Man of Leghorn. | 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.