My Soul Is Dark II
But bid the strain be wild and deep,Nor let thy notes of joy be first:I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,Or else this heavy heart will burst;For it hath been by sorrow nursed,And ached in sleepless silence long;And now 'tis doomed to know the worst,And break at once--or yield to song.
Words in this poem
- sleepless a.
- Having no sleep; wakeful.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
My Soul Is Dark II 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, My Soul Is Dark II, in The Giaour, and Other Poems (1816), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21811, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/byron-works-3/my-soul-is-dark-ii.html, id L23946.
Form and metre
My Soul Is Dark II is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABBCBC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 ABABBCBC deepA · firstB · weepA · burstB · nursedB · longC · worstB · songC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| But bid the strain be wild and deep, | 8 | ········ |
| Nor let thy notes of joy be first: | 8 | ········ |
| I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Or else this heavy heart will burst; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| For it hath been by sorrow nursed, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And ached in sleepless silence long; | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And now 'tis doomed to know the worst, | 8 | ········ |
| And break at once--or yield to song. | 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 8 ["It was generally conceived that Lord Byron's reported singularities approached on some occasions to derangement; and at one period, indeed, it was very currently asserted that his intellects were actually impaired. The report only served to amuse his Lordship. He referred to the circumstance, and declared that he would try how a Madman could write: seizing the pen with eagerness, he for a moment fixed his eyes in majestic wildness on vacancy; when, like a flash of inspiration, without erasing a single word, the above verses were the result."--Fugitive Pieces, 1829, p. 37.]
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