North Wind
From the vast and desert deeps,Where the lonely Kraken sleeps,Where fixed the icy mountains highGlimmer to the twilight sky;Where, six lingering months to last,The night has closed, the day is past,Father, lo, I come, I come:I have heard the wizard's drum,And the withered Lapland hag,Seal, with muttered spell, her bag:O'er mountains white, and forests sere,I flew, and with a wink am here.
Words in this poem
- kraken n.
- A fabulous Scandinavian sea monster, often represented as resembling an island, but sometimes as resembling an immense octopus. [Prob. from OSw. krake, or ODan. krage the trunk of a tree, the branches of which are not entirely cut off, to which it was likened by the Norwegian mariners.]
- sere n.
- Claw; talon. Chapman. [F. serre.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
North Wind is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan, Project Gutenberg ebook #18915; 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 Lisle Bowles, North Wind, in The Poetical Works, Volume I (1789–1837), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18915, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bowles-sonnets/north-wind.html, id L09973.
Form and metre
North Wind is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 83% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.6 syllables. 8% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 --AABBCCDDEE deeps · sleeps · highA · skyA · lastB · pastB · comeC · drumC · hagD · bagD · sereE · hereE
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.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| From the vast and desert deeps, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Where the lonely Kraken sleeps, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Where fixed the icy mountains high | 9 | ··˘·/˘/˘· |
| Glimmer to the twilight sky; | 7 | /˘··/·· |
| Where, six lingering months to last, | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| The night has closed, the day is past, | 9 | ····˘···· |
| Father, lo, I come, I come: | 7 | /˘····· |
| I have heard the wizard's drum, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And the withered Lapland hag, | 7 | ··/˘/·· |
| Seal, with muttered spell, her bag: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| O'er mountains white, and forests sere, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| I flew, and with a wink am here. | 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.