Titmarsh's Carmen Lilliense
My heart is weary, my peace is gone,How shall I e'er my woes reveal?I have no money, I lie in pawn,A stranger in the town of Lille.
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
Titmarsh's Carmen Lilliense is in the public domain. This text is taken from Ballads, Project Gutenberg ebook #2732; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Makepeace Thackeray, Titmarsh's Carmen Lilliense, in Ballads (1849–1855), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #2732, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/thackeray-ballads/titmarsh-s-carmen-lilliense.html, id L10408.
Form and metre
Titmarsh's Carmen Lilliense is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.5 syllables.
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 ABAB goneA · revealB · pawnA · lilleB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My heart is weary, my peace is gone, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| How shall I e'er my woes reveal? | 8 | ······˘/ |
| I have no money, I lie in pawn, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| A stranger in the town of Lille. | 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.