On Alexis
'Fair is Alexis,' I no sooner said,When every one his eyes that way convey'd.My soul, as when some dog a bone we showWho snatcheth it,--lost we not Phaedrus so?
About this text
On Alexis is in the public domain. This text is taken from Thomas Stanley: His Original Lyrics, Complete, In Their Collated Readings of 1647, 1651, 1657. With an Introduction, Textual Notes, a List of Editions, an Appendix of Translations, and a Portrait., Project Gutenberg ebook #32986; 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 Stanley, On Alexis, in Original Lyrics (1651), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32986, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stanley-lyrics/on-alexis.html, id L09009.
Form and metre
On Alexis is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: heroic couplets. 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 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 --AA said · convey'd · showA · soA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 'Fair is Alexis,' I no sooner said, | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| When every one his eyes that way convey'd. | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| My soul, as when some dog a bone we show | 10 | ·········· |
| Who snatcheth it,--lost we not Phaedrus so? | 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.