Dora
She knelt upon her brother’s grave,My little girl of six years old--He used to be so good and brave,The sweetest lamb of all our fold;He used to shout, he used to sing,Of all our tribe the little king--And so unto the turf her ear she laid,To hark if still in that dark place he play’d.No sound! no sound!Death’s silence was profound;And horror creptInto her aching heart, and Dora wept.If this is as it ought to be,My God, I leave it unto Thee.
Words in this poem
- aching a.
- That aches; continuously painful. See Ache.
- ought p. p.
- Was or were under obligation to pay; owed. [Orig. the preterit of the verb to owe. OE. oughte, aughte, ahte, AS. ahte. sq. root110. See Owe.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dora is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, Project Gutenberg ebook #66619; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Edward Brown, Dora, in Poems (1830–1897), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66619, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/obev-thomas-edward-brown/dora.html, id L16242.
Form and metre
Dora is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 71% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 7% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 ABABCCDDEEFFGG graveA · oldB · braveA · foldB · singC · kingC · laidD · play'dD · soundE · profoundE · creptF · weptF · beG · theeG
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| She knelt upon her brother’s grave, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| My little girl of six years old-- | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| He used to be so good and brave, | 8 | ········ |
| The sweetest lamb of all our fold; | 9 | ·/˘···/˘· |
| He used to shout, he used to sing, | 8 | ········ |
| Of all our tribe the little king-- | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| And so unto the turf her ear she laid, | 10 | ·········· |
| To hark if still in that dark place he play’d. | 10 | ·········· |
| No sound! no sound! | 4 | ···· |
| Death’s silence was profound; | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| And horror crept | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Into her aching heart, and Dora wept. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| If this is as it ought to be, | 8 | ········ |
| My God, I leave it unto Thee. | 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.