Named Echo
In wood and wild, ye warbling throng,Your heavy loss deplore;Now, half extinct your powers of song,Sweet Echo is no more.
Ye jarring, screeching things around,Scream your discordant joys;Now, half your din of tuneless soundWith Echo silent lies.
Words in this poem
- deplore v. t.
- To feel or to express deep and poignant grief for; to bewail; to lament; to mourn; to sorrow over. [L. deplorare; de- + plorare to cry out, wail, lament; prob. akin to pluere to rain, and to E. flow: cf. F. déplorer. Cf. Flow.]
- jarring a.
- Shaking; disturbing; discordant. [See Jar.]
- tuneless a.
- Without tune; inharmonious; unmusical.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Named Echo is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, Project Gutenberg ebook #1279; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Burns, Named Echo, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/named-echo.html, id L03325.
Form and metre
Named Echo is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 throngA · deploreB · songA · moreB
- 2 A-A- aroundA · joys · soundA · lies
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In wood and wild, ye warbling throng, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Your heavy loss deplore; | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| Now, half extinct your powers of song, | 8 | ··˘/·/·· |
| Sweet Echo is no more. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Ye jarring, screeching things around, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Scream your discordant joys; | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| Now, half your din of tuneless sound | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| With Echo silent lies. | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
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.