A Palace Story
A network handkerchief contains no tear.'Tis dawn at court ere wine and music sate.The rich red crops no aftermath await.Rest on a screen, and you will fall, I fear.
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.]
- await v. t.
- To watch for; to look out for. [OF. awaitier, agaitier; (L. ad) + waitier, gaitier to watch, F. guetter. See Wait.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Palace Story is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Lute of Jade, Project Gutenberg ebook #390, the L. Cranmer-Byng translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Various, A Palace Story, in A Lute of Jade (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lute-of-jade/a-palace-story.html, id L15602.
Form and metre
A Palace Story is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 ABBA tearA · sateB · awaitB · fearA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A network handkerchief contains no tear. | 10 | ·/·/˘˘˘/·· |
| 'Tis dawn at court ere wine and music sate. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The rich red crops no aftermath await. | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Rest on a screen, and you will fall, I fear. | 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.