Madrigal
Breaking his way through the white clouds in the azure,The sun laughs out and cries:“O Springtime, come!”
Across the greening hills with placid murmursThe streams sing back to the breeze:“O Springtime, come!”
“O Springtime, come!” to his heart the poet is saying,While gazing, O pure Lalage, in thine eyes!
Words in this poem
- springtime n.
- The season of spring; springtide.
- greening n.
- A greenish apple, of several varieties, among which the Rhode Island greening is the best known for its fine-grained acid flesh and its excellent keeping quality.
- placid a.
- Pleased; contented; unruffied; undisturbed; serene; peaceful; tranquil; quiet; gentle. [L. placidus, originally, pleasing, mild, from placere to please: cf. F. placide. See Please.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Madrigal is in the public domain. This text is taken from By Frank Sewall (London: Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1893), Project Gutenberg ebook #56711, the Frank Sewall translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Giosuè Carducci, Madrigal, in Poems of Giosuè Carducci (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56711, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carducci-poems/madrigal.html, id L26549.
Form and metre
Madrigal is 8 lines in 3 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AA- murmursA · breezeA · come
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Breaking his way through the white clouds in the azure, | 12 | /˘········/˘ |
| The sun laughs out and cries: | 6 | ······ |
| “O Springtime, come!” | 4 | ·/·· |
| Across the greening hills with placid murmurs | 11 | ˘/·/˘··/˘/˘ |
| The streams sing back to the breeze: | 7 | ······· |
| “O Springtime, come!” | 4 | ·/·· |
| “O Springtime, come!” to his heart the poet is saying, | 13 | ·/······/˘·/˘ |
| While gazing, O pure Lalage, in thine eyes! | 10 | ·/˘······· |
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.