The Little Boy Found

“The Little Boy Found” consists of two stanzas of four lines each called quatrains. Within each quatrain, the lines follow the same rhyme scheme with the first and third lines not rhyming and the second and fourth lines perfectly rhyming. For example, in the first stanza, the first and third lines end with “fen” and “nigh” while the second and fourth lines rhyme “light” with “white.” In the second stanza, the first and third lines end with “led” and “dale,” while the second and fourth lines rhyme “brought” with “sought.”

As for the poem's meter, the lines consists of both iambic and anapestic feet. In poetry, a “foot” is a unit consisting of a certain number of stressed and unstressed syllables. An iamb consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. An anapest consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. The first line contains two anapests bookended by iambs on either end: “The little boy lost in the lonely fen.” The second and third lines begin with two or three iambs, respectively, but end with an anapest: “Led by the wande-ring light, / Began to cry, but God, ev-er nigh.