My Love, Thou Art a Nosegay Sweet
My love, thou art a nosegay sweet,My sweetest flower I prove thee;And pleas’d I pin thee to my breast,And dearly do I love thee.
And when, my nosegay, thou shalt fade,As sweet a flower thou’lt prove thee;And as thou witherest on my breast,For beauty past I’ll love thee.
And when, my nosegay, thou shalt die,And heaven’s flower shalt prove thee;My hopes shall follow to the sky,And everlasting love thee.
Words in this poem
- nosegay n.
- A bunch of odorous and showy flowers; a bouquet; a posy. [Nose + gay in the sense of a gay or showy thing.]
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
My Love, Thou Art a Nosegay Sweet is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #52601; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Clare, My Love, Thou Art a Nosegay Sweet, in Poems (1820–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #52601, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/clare-poems/my-love-thou-art-a-nosegay-sweet.html, id L06663.
Form and metre
My Love, Thou Art a Nosegay Sweet is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables.
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 -A-A sweet · theeA · breast · theeA
- 2 -A-A fade · theeA · breast · theeA
- 3 ABAB dieA · theeB · skyA · theeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My love, thou art a nosegay sweet, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| My sweetest flower I prove thee; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And pleas’d I pin thee to my breast, | 8 | ········ |
| And dearly do I love thee. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| And when, my nosegay, thou shalt fade, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| As sweet a flower thou’lt prove thee; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And as thou witherest on my breast, | 9 | ···/˘˘··· |
| For beauty past I’ll love thee. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| And when, my nosegay, thou shalt die, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And heaven’s flower shalt prove thee; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| My hopes shall follow to the sky, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And everlasting love thee. | 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.