There was an Old Person of Sparta
There was an Old Person of Sparta,Who had twenty-five sons and one "darter;"He fed them on Snails, and weighed them in scales,That wonderful Person of Sparta.
Words in this poem
- darter n.
- One who darts, or who throw darts; that which darts.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
There was an Old Person of Sparta 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 Sparta, 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-sparta.html, id L18200.
Form and metre
There was an Old Person of Sparta 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. 77% 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 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 spartaA · darter · scales · spartaA
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 Sparta, | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| Who had twenty-five sons and one "darter;" | 10 | ··/˘····/˘ |
| He fed them on Snails, and weighed them in scales, | 10 | ·········· |
| That wonderful Person of Sparta. | 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.