Sent with a Pair of Wine-Glasses
Fair Empress of the Poet’s soul,And Queen of Poetesses;Clarinda, take this little boon,This humble pair of glasses:
And fill them up with generous juice,As generous as your mind;And pledge them to the generous toast,“The whole of human kind!”
“To those who love us!” second fill;But not to those whom we love;Lest we love those who love not us—A third—“To thee and me, Love!”
Words in this poem
- boon n.
- A prayer or petition. [OE. bone, boin, a petition, fr. Icel. b; akin to Sw. & Dan. b, AS. b, and perh. to E. ban; but influenced by F. bon good, fr. L. bonus. Ban, Bounty.]
- generous a.
- Of honorable birth or origin; highborn. [F. généreux, fr. L. generous of noble birth, noble, excellent, magnanimous, fr. genus birth, race: cf. It. generoso. See 2d Gender.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sent with a Pair of Wine-Glasses 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, Sent with a Pair of Wine-Glasses, in Poems and Songs (1786–1796), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1279, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/burns-poems/sent-with-a-pair-of-wine-glasses.html, id L03131.
Form and metre
Sent with a Pair of Wine-Glasses is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.3 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
- 2 -A-A juice · mindA · toast · kindA
- 3 -A-A fill · loveA · us · loveA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Fair Empress of the Poet’s soul, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And Queen of Poetesses; | 6 | ······ |
| Clarinda, take this little boon, | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| This humble pair of glasses: | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| And fill them up with generous juice, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| As generous as your mind; | 7 | ·/˘˘··· |
| And pledge them to the generous toast, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| “The whole of human kind!” | 6 | ···/˘· |
| “To those who love us!” second fill; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| But not to those whom we love; | 7 | ······· |
| Lest we love those who love not us— | 8 | ········ |
| A third—“To thee and me, Love!” | 7 | ······· |
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.