A Hate-Song
A hater he came and sat by a ditch,And he took an old cracked lute;And he sang a song which was more of a screech'Gainst a woman that was a brute.
Words in this poem
- cracked a.
- Coarsely ground or broken; as, cracked wheat.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Hate-Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #4798; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Hate-Song, in Ode to the West Wind, and Other Poems (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/a-hate-song.html, id L16329.
Form and metre
A Hate-Song 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 iambic pentameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.0 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ditch · luteA · screech · bruteA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A hater he came and sat by a ditch, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And he took an old cracked lute; | 7 | ······· |
| And he sang a song which was more of a screech | 11 | ··········· |
| 'Gainst a woman that was a brute. | 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.