Ah, Sunflower
Ah, sunflower, weary of time,Who countest the steps of the sun;Seeking after that sweet golden climeWhere the traveller’s journey is done;
Where the Youth pined away with desire,And the pale virgin shrouded in snow,Arise from their graves, and aspireWhere my Sunflower wishes to go!
Words in this poem
- clime n.
- A climate; a tract or region of the earth. See Climate. [L. clima. See Climate.]
- aspire v. t.
- To aspire to; to long for; to try to reach; to mount to.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Ah, Sunflower is in the public domain. This text is taken from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, Project Gutenberg ebook #1934; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Blake, Ah, Sunflower, in Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–1794), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1934, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/blake-songs/ah-sunflower.html, id L02901.
Form and metre
Ah, Sunflower is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, as Wikipedia: Ah! Sun-flower has it. 84% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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 ABAB timeA · sunB · climeA · doneB
- 2 -A-A desire · snowA · aspire · goA
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 anapaestic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Ah, sunflower, weary of time, | 8 | ·/·˘/˘·· |
| Who countest the steps of the sun; | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Seeking after that sweet golden clime | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
| Where the traveller’s journey is done; | 9 | ··/˘˘/˘·· |
| Where the Youth pined away with desire, | 10 | ····˘/·˘/˘ |
| And the pale virgin shrouded in snow, | 9 | ···/˘/˘·· |
| Arise from their graves, and aspire | 8 | ˘/····˘/ |
| Where my Sunflower wishes to go! | 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.