If That High World I
If that high world, which lies beyondOur own, surviving Love endears;If there the cherished heart be fond,The eye the same, except in tears--How welcome those untrodden spheres!How sweet this very hour to die!To soar from earth and find all fearsLost in thy light--Eternity!
Words in this poem
- surviving a.
- Remaining alive; yet living or existing; as, surviving friends; surviving customs.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
If That High World I is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Works of Lord Byron. Vol. 3, Project Gutenberg ebook #21811; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Lord Byron, If That High World I, in The Giaour, and Other Poems (1816), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21811, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-works-3/if-that-high-world-i.html, id L23938.
Form and metre
If That High World I is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See 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 ABABB-B- beyondA · endearsB · fondA · tearsB · spheresB · die · fearsB · eternity
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 |
|---|---|---|
| If that high world, which lies beyond | 8 | ········ |
| Our own, surviving Love endears; | 8 | /·˘/˘·˘/ |
| If there the cherished heart be fond, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The eye the same, except in tears-- | 8 | ········ |
| How welcome those untrodden spheres! | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| How sweet this very hour to die! | 8 | ···/˘/·· |
| To soar from earth and find all fears | 8 | ········ |
| Lost in thy light--Eternity! | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
Notes from the edition 1
E. H. Coleridge's notes to The Works of Lord Byron, Poetry, Vol. III (John Murray, 1900; Project Gutenberg #21811). Bracketed passages are the editor's; unbracketed are Byron's own or earlier editors'. Lettered variant readings (manuscript and edition collations) are not harvested here, matching the treatment of Coleridge's Don Juan notes.
- Line 1 [According to Nathan, the monosyllable "if" at the beginning of the first line led to "numerous attacks on the noble author's religion, and in some an inference of atheism was drawn."
Needless to add, "in a subsequent conversation," Byron repels this charge, and delivers himself of some admirable if commonplace sentiments on the "grand perhaps."-Fugitive Pieces, 1829, pp. 5, 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.