Camillo: Oh, Lady Beatrice!
BEATRICE:Give yourself no unnecessary pain,My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, tieMy girdle for me, and bind up this hairIn any simple knot; ay, that does well.And yours I see is coming down. How oftenHave we done this for one another; nowWe shall not do it any more. My Lord,We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Camillo: Oh, Lady Beatrice! is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 1, Project Gutenberg ebook #4797; 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, Camillo: Oh, Lady Beatrice!, in Alastor, and Other Poems (1813–1820), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4797, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-poems/camillo-oh-lady-beatrice.html, id L00252.
Form and metre
Camillo: Oh, Lady Beatrice! is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.3 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 44% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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--BA--B beatrice · painA · tie · hair · wellB · oftenA · now · lord · wellB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| BEATRICE: | 3 | /˘˘ |
| Give yourself no unnecessary pain, | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘·˘· |
| My dear Lord Cardinal. Here, Mother, tie | 10 | ···/˘˘·/˘· |
| My girdle for me, and bind up this hair | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| In any simple knot; ay, that does well. | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| And yours I see is coming down. How often | 11 | ·····/˘··/˘ |
| Have we done this for one another; now | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| We shall not do it any more. My Lord, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| We are quite ready. Well, 'tis very well. | 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.