Hello. Can someone help me with scanning a poem?
1. A. Scan the following lines from Mary, Lady Chudleigh's poem "To the Ladies". Mark the syllables, separate the feet with short vertical lines, and indicate the rhyme scheme
Him still serve, him still obey, ____
And nothing act, and nothing say, ____
But what haughty lord thinks fit, ____
Who with the power, has all the wit. ___
1. B. What is the meter of these four lines?
Because the ending lines are "obey, say, fit, and wit", the rhyme scheme could be AABB or BBAA. But I'm not very good at this kind of stuff.
Thanks in advance.
Sure, I can help you with scanning the poem and determining the meter and rhyme scheme. Scanning a poem essentially means analyzing its metrical pattern and identifying stressed and unstressed syllables.
To scan the poem "To the Ladies" by Mary, Lady Chudleigh, you'll need to mark the syllables, separate the feet with short vertical lines, and indicate the rhyme scheme. Let's break it down:
1. A. Scanning the lines:
Him still serve, him still obey,
We can break this line into feet by marking the syllables and separating the feet with vertical lines:
Him | still | serve, | him | still | o- | bey
And nothing act, and nothing say,
Again, marking the syllables and separating the feet:
And | no- | thing | act, | and | no- | thing | say
But what haughty lord thinks fit,
Continuing with marking the syllables and separating the feet:
But | what | haut- | ty | lord | thinks | fit
Who with the power, has all the wit.
Marking the syllables and separating the feet:
Who | with | the | pow- | er, | has | all | the | wit
Now that we have marked the syllables and separated them into feet, we can move on to identifying the rhyme scheme.
Looking at the end words of each line, we have:
obey
say
fit
wit
The rhyme scheme in this case is an ABAB pattern.
1. B. Determining the meter of the four lines:
The meter in poetry refers to the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in a line. Let's analyze the meter of each line by marking the stressed syllables with capital letters and the unstressed syllables with lowercase letters:
Him still serve, him still OBEY: trochaic meter (the stress falls on the first syllable of each foot)
And NOTHING act, and NOTHING SAY: trochaic meter
But what HAUGHTY LORD thinks FIT: iambic meter (the stress falls on the second syllable of each foot)
Who with the POWER, has ALL the WIT: pyrrhic meter (each foot consists of two unstressed syllables)
So, the meter of these four lines is a combination of trochaic, iambic, and pyrrhic meters.
I hope this helps you scan the poem and understand the meter and rhyme scheme better. Let me know if you have any further questions!