In the Forest
List to the forest-voice murmuring low:All that it saw when alone with its laughter,All that it suffered in times that came after,Mournful it tells, that the wind may know.
About this text
In the Forest 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, In the Forest, in Poems and Songs (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bjornson-poems-and-songs/in-the-forest.html, id L29353.
Form and metre
In the Forest is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 ABBA lowA · laughterB · afterB · knowA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| List to the forest-voice murmuring low: | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| All that it saw when alone with its laughter, | 11 | ·····˘/··/˘ |
| All that it suffered in times that came after, | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| Mournful it tells, that the wind may know. | 9 | /˘······· |
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.