A Song of Divine Love
Lord, when the sense of Thy sweet graceSends vp my soul to seek Thy face,Thy blessed eyes breed such desire,I dy in Loue's delicious fire.O Loue, I am thy sacrifice!Be still triumphant, blessed eyes!Still shine on me, fair suns! that IStill may behold, though still I dy.
About this text
A Song of Divine Love is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume I, Project Gutenberg ebook #38549; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Richard Crashaw, A Song of Divine Love, in Steps to the Temple and Other Poems (1646–1652), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38549, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/crashaw-poems/a-song-of-divine-love.html, id L12080.
Form and metre
A Song of Divine Love is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AABB---- graceA · faceA · desireB · fireB · sacrifice · eyes · i · dy
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lord, when the sense of Thy sweet grace | 8 | ········ |
| Sends vp my soul to seek Thy face, | 8 | ········ |
| Thy blessed eyes breed such desire, | 9 | ··˘···˘/˘ |
| I dy in Loue's delicious fire. | 9 | ····˘/˘/˘ |
| O Loue, I am thy sacrifice! | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Be still triumphant, blessed eyes! | 7 | ··˘/˘·· |
| Still shine on me, fair suns! that I | 8 | ········ |
| Still may behold, though still I dy. | 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.