Sent to a Friend with a Volume of Tennyson
Wouldst know the clash of knightly steel on steel?Or list the throstle singing loud and clear?Or walk at twilight by some haunted mereIn Surrey; or in throbbing London feelLife's pulse at highest--hark, the minster's peal! . . .Turn but the page, that various world is here!
Words in this poem
- knightly a.
- Of or pertaining to a knight; becoming a knight; chivalrous; as, a knightly combat; a knightly spirit. [AS. cnihtlic boyish.]
- throstle n.
- The song thrush. See under Song. [OE. throsel, AS. , ; akin to MHG. trostel, G. drossel, Icel. , Sw. trast, Lith. strazdas, L. turdus. *238. Cf. Thrush the bird.]
- haunted a.
- Inhabited by, or subject to the visits of, apparitions; frequented by a ghost.
- peal v. i.
- To appeal. Spencer.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sent to a Friend with a Volume of Tennyson is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic, Project Gutenberg ebook #595; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Sent to a Friend with a Volume of Tennyson, in The Sisters' Tragedy, with Other Poems (1891), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #595, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/aldrich-poems/sent-to-a-friend-with-a-volume-of-tennyson.html, id L10764.
Form and metre
Sent to a Friend with a Volume of Tennyson is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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 ABBAAB steelA · clearB · mereB · feelA · pealA · hereB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Wouldst know the clash of knightly steel on steel? | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Or list the throstle singing loud and clear? | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Or walk at twilight by some haunted mere | 10 | ···/···/˘· |
| In Surrey; or in throbbing London feel | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Life's pulse at highest--hark, the minster's peal! . . . | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Turn but the page, that various world is here! | 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.