I Passed by the House
I passed by the house one summer day,Morning sunshine upon it lay;Toward the windows that blood-red burnedFlaming my soul was turned, was turned.There spring had found meAnd captive bound meTo lissome hands and soft lips enthralling,To smiles now stained by the teardrops falling.
Till the view from my vision dies,To it backward I send my eyes;All that was becomes new and near,The forgotten grows warm and dear;Mem'ries wander,While this I ponder,And from the springtime all love's sweet dreamingForward and back in my soul is streaming.
Joyous that time and joyous now,Sorrow that time and .sorrow now.Sun on meadows bedewed appears,Soul in mem'ries of smiles and tears.When they wakingTheir bounds are breaking,When streams their ebbing with sinking power,The soul bears poetry's bud and flower.
Words in this poem
- sunshine n.
- The light of the sun, or the place where it shines; the direct rays of the sun, the place where they fall, or the warmth and light which they give.
- lissome a.
- Limber; supple; flexible; lithe; lithesome. [For lithesome.]
- springtime n.
- The season of spring; springtide.
- streaming a.
- Sending forth streams.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
I Passed by the House is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Songs, Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, the Arthur Hubbell Palmer translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, I Passed by the House, in Poems and Songs (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bjornson-poems-and-songs/i-passed-by-the-house.html, id L29306.
Form and metre
I Passed by the House is 24 lines in 3 stanzas of 8 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBCCDD. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 AABBCCDD dayA · layA · burnedB · turnedB · meC · meC · enthrallingD · fallingD
- 2 AABBCCDD diesA · eyesA · nearB · dearB · wanderC · ponderC · dreamingD · streamingD
- 3 AABBCCDD nowA · nowA · appearsB · tearsB · wakingC · breakingC · powerD · flowerD
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I passed by the house one summer day, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Morning sunshine upon it lay; | 8 | /˘/····· |
| Toward the windows that blood-red burned | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Flaming my soul was turned, was turned. | 8 | /˘······ |
| There spring had found me | 5 | ····· |
| And captive bound me | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| To lissome hands and soft lips enthralling, | 10 | ·······˘/˘ |
| To smiles now stained by the teardrops falling. | 10 | ········/˘ |
| Till the view from my vision dies, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| To it backward I send my eyes; | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| All that was becomes new and near, | 8 | ···˘/··· |
| The forgotten grows warm and dear; | 8 | ·˘/˘···· |
| Mem'ries wander, | 3 | ·/˘ |
| While this I ponder, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| And from the springtime all love's sweet dreaming | 10 | ···/····/˘ |
| Forward and back in my soul is streaming. | 10 | /˘······/˘ |
| Joyous that time and joyous now, | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Sorrow that time and .sorrow now. | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Sun on meadows bedewed appears, | 8 | ··/···˘/ |
| Soul in mem'ries of smiles and tears. | 7 | ······· |
| When they waking | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Their bounds are breaking, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| When streams their ebbing with sinking power, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘/ |
| The soul bears poetry's bud and flower. | 8 | ···/˘··/ |
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.