Sonnet
When Phoebe form'd a wanton smile,My soul! it reach'd not here:Strange, that thy peace, thou trembler, fliesBefore a rising tear!From 'midst the drops, my love is born,That o'er those eyelids rove:Thus issued from a teeming waveThe fabled queen of love.
Words in this poem
- phoebe n.
- The pewee, or pewit.
- trembler n.
- One who trembles.
- teeming a.
- Prolific; productive.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sonnet 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, Sonnet, in Poetical Works (1746), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #29879, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/collins-poems/sonnet.html, id L13363.
Form and metre
Sonnet is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 98%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.1 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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---- smile · hereA · flies · tearA · born · rove · wave · love
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When Phoebe form'd a wanton smile, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| My soul! it reach'd not here: | 6 | ······ |
| Strange, that thy peace, thou trembler, flies | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Before a rising tear! | 6 | ···/˘· |
| From 'midst the drops, my love is born, | 8 | ········ |
| That o'er those eyelids rove: | 6 | ···/·· |
| Thus issued from a teeming wave | 9 | ·/˘˘··/˘· |
| The fabled queen of love. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.