On Her Weeping at Her Sister's Wedding
Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn,Lament not Hannah's happy state;You may be happy in your turn,And seize the treasure you regret.
With Love united Hymen stands,And softly whispers to your charms,"Meet but your lover in my bands,You'll find your sister in his arms."
Words in this poem
- hymen n.
- A fold of muscous membrane often found at the orifice of the vagina; the vaginal membrane.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On Her Weeping at Her Sister's Wedding is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of William Collins; With a Memoir, Project Gutenberg ebook #29879; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Collins, On Her Weeping at Her Sister's Wedding, in Poetical Works (1746), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #29879, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/collins-poems/on-her-weeping-at-her-sister-s-wedding.html, id L13362.
Form and metre
On Her Weeping at Her Sister's Wedding is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 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.
- 2 ABAB standsA · charmsB · bandsA · armsB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Cease, fair Aurelia, cease to mourn, | 9 | ··˘/˘˘··· |
| Lament not Hannah's happy state; | 8 | ˘/·/˘/˘· |
| You may be happy in your turn, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And seize the treasure you regret. | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| With Love united Hymen stands, | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘· |
| And softly whispers to your charms, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| "Meet but your lover in my bands, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| You'll find your sister in his arms." | 8 | ···/˘··· |
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.