Inviting the Influence of a Young Lady upon the Opening Year I

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) · 1923

iambic tetrameter · ABABCBCB · 8 lines · from Sonnets and Verse

You wear the morning like your dressAnd are with mastery crowned;Whenas you walk your lovelinessGoes shining all around.Upon your secret, smiling waySuch new contents were found,The Dancing Loves made holidayOn that delightful ground.

Words in this poem

loveliness n.
The state or quality of being lovely. [From Lovely.]

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

Inviting the Influence of a Young Lady upon the Opening Year I is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sonnets and Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #60663; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.

Cite as: Hilaire Belloc, Inviting the Influence of a Young Lady upon the Opening Year I, in Sonnets and Verse (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60663, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/belloc-sonnets-verse/inviting-the-influence-of-a-young-lady-upon-the-opening-year.html, id L21678.

Form and metre

Inviting the Influence of a Young Lady upon the Opening Year I is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCBCB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).

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. 1 ABABCBCB dressA · crownedB · lovelinessA · aroundB · wayC · foundB · holidayC · groundB
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.

LineSyl.Stress
You wear the morning like your dress8···/˘···
And are with mastery crowned;7···/˘˘·
Whenas you walk your loveliness8/˘···/˘˘
Goes shining all around.6·/˘···
Upon your secret, smiling way8···/˘/˘·
Such new contents were found,6··/˘··
The Dancing Loves made holiday8·/˘··/˘·
On that delightful ground.6··˘/˘·

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.

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