Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven
Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven,And love in which my hound has part,Can hang no weight upon my heartIn its assumptions up to heaven;
And I am so much more than these,As thou, perchance, art more than I,And yet I spare them sympathyAnd I would set their pains at ease.
So may’st thou watch me where I weep,As, unto vaster motions bound,The circuits of thine orbit roundA higher height, a deeper deep.
About this text
Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven is in the public domain. This text is taken from In memoriam, Project Gutenberg ebook #70950; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alfred Tennyson, Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven, in In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70950, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-in-memoriam/section-61.html, id L18421.
Form and metre
Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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 ABBA drivenA · partB · heartB · heavenA
- 2 ABBA theseA · iB · sympathyB · easeA
- 3 ABBA weepA · boundB · roundB · deepA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Yet pity for a horse o’er-driven, | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| And love in which my hound has part, | 8 | ········ |
| Can hang no weight upon my heart | 8 | ········ |
| In its assumptions up to heaven; | 9 | ··˘/˘··/˘ |
| And I am so much more than these, | 8 | ········ |
| As thou, perchance, art more than I, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| And yet I spare them sympathy | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| And I would set their pains at ease. | 8 | ········ |
| So may’st thou watch me where I weep, | 8 | ········ |
| As, unto vaster motions bound, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The circuits of thine orbit round | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| A higher height, a deeper deep. | 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.