The Hardship upon the Ladies 1733
Poor ladies! though their business be to play,'Tis hard they must be busy night and day:Why should they want the privilege of men,Nor take some small diversions now and then?Had women been the makers of our laws,(And why they were not, I can see no cause,)The men should slave at cards from morn to nightAnd female pleasures be to read and write.
Words in this poem
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Hardship upon the Ladies 1733 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 Hardship upon the Ladies 1733, in On Poetry: A Rhapsody, and Other Poems (1727), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #14353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems-vol1/the-hardship-upon-the-ladies-1733.html, id L24565.
Form and metre
The Hardship upon the Ladies 1733 is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 AABBCCDD playA · dayA · menB · thenB · lawsC · causeC · nightD · writeD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Poor ladies! though their business be to play, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| 'Tis hard they must be busy night and day: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Why should they want the privilege of men, | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Nor take some small diversions now and then? | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| Had women been the makers of our laws, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·/· |
| (And why they were not, I can see no cause,) | 10 | ·········· |
| The men should slave at cards from morn to night | 10 | ·········· |
| And female pleasures be to read and write. | 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.