There was an Old Man of the North
There was an Old Man of the North,Who fell into a basin of broth;But a laudable cook fished him out with a hook,Which saved that Old Man of the North.
About this text
There was an Old Man of the North 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 the North, 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-the-north.html, id L18146.
Form and metre
There was an Old Man of the North is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in anapaestic trimeter. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.2 syllables.
See 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 A--A northA · broth · hook · northA
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 the North, | 8 | ········ |
| Who fell into a basin of broth; | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| But a laudable cook fished him out with a hook, | 12 | ··/˘˘······· |
| Which saved that Old Man of the North. | 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.