There was an Old Person of Spain
There was an Old Person of Spain,Who hated all trouble and pain;So he sate on a chair with his feet in the air,That umbrageous Old Person of Spain.
Words in this poem
- sate v. t.
- To satisfy the desire or appetite of; to satiate; to glut; to surfeit. [Probably shortened fr. satiate: cf. L. satus full. See Satiate.]
- umbrageous a.
- Forming or affording a shade; shady; shaded; as, umbrageous trees or foliage. [Cf. F. ombraqeux shy, skittish, suspicious, in OF. also, shady. See Umbrage.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
There was an Old Person of Spain 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 Person of Spain, in A Book of Nonsense (1846), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13646, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lear-nonsense/there-was-an-old-person-of-spain.html, id L18210.
Form and metre
There was an Old Person of Spain 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 9.2 syllables.
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 spainA · painA · air · spainA
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 Person of Spain, | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Who hated all trouble and pain; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| So he sate on a chair with his feet in the air, | 12 | ············ |
| That umbrageous Old Person of Spain. | 9 | ·˘/˘·/˘·· |
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.