The Dean's Manner of Living
On rainy days alone I dineUpon a chick and pint of wine.On rainy days I dine alone,And pick my chicken to the bone;But this my servants much enrages,No scraps remain to save board-wages.In weather fine I nothing spend,But often spunge upon a friend;Yet, where he's not so rich as I,I pay my club, and so good b'ye.
Words in this poem
- dine v. i.
- To eat the principal regular meal of the day; to take dinner. [F. dîner, OF. disner, LL. disnare, contr. fr. an assumed disjunare; dis- + an assumed junare (OF. juner) to fast, for L. jejunare, fr. jejunus fasting. See Jeju]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Dean's Manner of Living is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1, Project Gutenberg ebook #14353; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Jonathan Swift, The Dean's Manner of Living, in On Poetry: A Rhapsody, and Other Poems (1727), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #14353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems-vol1/the-dean-s-manner-of-living.html, id L24576.
Form and metre
The Dean's Manner of Living is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 AABBCCDDEE dineA · wineA · aloneB · boneB · enragesC · wagesC · spendD · friendD · iE · b'yeE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| On rainy days alone I dine | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| Upon a chick and pint of wine. | 8 | ········ |
| On rainy days I dine alone, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| And pick my chicken to the bone; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| But this my servants much enrages, | 9 | ···/˘·˘/˘ |
| No scraps remain to save board-wages. | 9 | ··˘/···/˘ |
| In weather fine I nothing spend, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| But often spunge upon a friend; | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Yet, where he's not so rich as I, | 8 | ········ |
| I pay my club, and so good b'ye. | 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.