Old Poesy
Sweet is the poesy of the olden time,In the unsullied infancy of rhyme,When Nature reigned omnipotent to teach,And Truth and Feeling owned the powers of speech.Rich is the music of each early theme,And sweet as sunshine in a summer dream,Giving to stocks and stones, in rapture’s strife,A soul of utterance and a tongue of life.Sweet are these wild flowers in their disarray,Which Art and Fashion fling as weeds away,To sport with shadows of inferior kind,Mere magic-lanthorns of the shifting mind,Automatons of wonder-working powers,Shadows of life, and artificial flowers.
Words in this poem
- poesy n.
- The art of composing poems; poetical skill or faculty; as, the heavenly gift of poesy. [F. poésie (cf. It. poesia), L. poesis, from Gr. Posy.]
- olden a.
- Old; ancient; as, the olden time.
- sunshine n.
- The light of the sun, or the place where it shines; the direct rays of the sun, the place where they fall, or the warmth and light which they give.
- strife n.
- The act of striving; earnest endeavor. [OF. estrif. See Strive.]
- disarray v. t.
- To throw into disorder; to break the array of. [Pref. dis- + array, v.: cf. OF. desarroyer, desarreier.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Old Poesy 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, Old Poesy, in Poems (1820–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #52601, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/clare-poems/old-poesy.html, id L06692.
Form and metre
Old Poesy is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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.
- 1 AABBCCDDEEFFGG timeA · rhymeA · teachB · speechB · themeC · dreamC · strifeD · lifeD · disarrayE · awayE · kindF · mindF · powersG · flowersG
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet is the poesy of the olden time, | 11 | ···/˘˘··/˘· |
| In the unsullied infancy of rhyme, | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘˘·· |
| When Nature reigned omnipotent to teach, | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘˘·· |
| And Truth and Feeling owned the powers of speech. | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| Rich is the music of each early theme, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And sweet as sunshine in a summer dream, | 10 | ···/···/˘· |
| Giving to stocks and stones, in rapture’s strife, | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| A soul of utterance and a tongue of life. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Sweet are these wild flowers in their disarray, | 10 | ····/···˘/ |
| Which Art and Fashion fling as weeds away, | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| To sport with shadows of inferior kind, | 10 | ···/··˘/˘· |
| Mere magic-lanthorns of the shifting mind, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Automatons of wonder-working powers, | 11 | ˘/˘··/˘/˘/˘ |
| Shadows of life, and artificial flowers. | 11 | /·····˘/˘/˘ |
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.