Written on a Card That Her Majesty Tore at Ombre
The cards you tear in value rise;So do the wounded by your eyes.Who to celestial things aspire,Are by that passion raised the higher.
Words in this poem
- aspire v. t.
- To aspire to; to long for; to try to reach; to mount to.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Written on a Card That Her Majesty Tore at Ombre is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham, Project Gutenberg ebook #12322; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edmund Waller, Written on a Card That Her Majesty Tore at Ombre, in Cooper's Hill, and Other Poems (1645–1668), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waller-denham/written-on-a-card-that-her-majesty-tore-at-ombre.html, id L09122.
Form and metre
Written on a Card That Her Majesty Tore at Ombre 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. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.5 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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-- riseA · eyesA · aspire · higher
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The cards you tear in value rise; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| So do the wounded by your eyes. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Who to celestial things aspire, | 8 | ··˘/˘·˘/ |
| Are by that passion raised the higher. | 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.