To My Wife
Pray, take these pearls!--and my thanks for themYou lavished, the home of my youth to gem!The thousands of hours of peaceful lusterYour spirit has filled, are pearls that clusterWith beauty blestOn my happy breast,And softly shiningMy brow are entwiningWith thoughts whence the truth gleams: Thus gave his wife,Who jeweled with tenderest love his life!
About this text
To My Wife 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, To My Wife, in Poems and Songs (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bjornson-poems-and-songs/to-my-wife.html, id L29264.
Form and metre
To My Wife is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
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 AABBCCDDEE themA · gemA · lusterB · clusterB · blestC · breastC · shiningD · entwiningD · wifeE · lifeE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Pray, take these pearls!--and my thanks for them | 9 | ········· |
| You lavished, the home of my youth to gem! | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| The thousands of hours of peaceful luster | 11 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘/˘ |
| Your spirit has filled, are pearls that cluster | 10 | ·/˘·····/˘ |
| With beauty blest | 4 | ·/˘· |
| On my happy breast, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| And softly shining | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| My brow are entwining | 6 | ···˘/˘ |
| With thoughts whence the truth gleams: Thus gave his wife, | 10 | ·········· |
| Who jeweled with tenderest love his life! | 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.