Desire of Fame
O unapproachable glories of the night!You type not my desire: enough for meThe vanished meteor’s immortality,Brief memory of a moment touched with light.
About this text
Desire of Fame is in the public domain. This text is taken from A chant of love for England, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #71425; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Helen Gray Cone, Desire of Fame, in A Chant of Love for England, and Other Poems (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #71425, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cone-chant-for-england/desire-of-fame.html, id L22085.
Form and metre
Desire of Fame is 4 lines in a single stanza.
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 nightA · me · immortality · lightA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O unapproachable glories of the night! | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| You type not my desire: enough for me | 10 | ····˘/˘/·· |
| The vanished meteor’s immortality, | 11 | ·/˘/˘˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Brief memory of a moment touched with light. | 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.