Additional Notes
--------emerging Naïads cullFrom leathery pods the vegetable wool.----eam circum Milesia vellera nymphæCarpebant, hyali saturo fucata colore.Virg. Georg. IV. 334.
Saw on his helm, her virgin hands inwove,Bright stars of gold, and mystic knots of love;
Green swells the beech, the widening knots improve,So spread the tender growths of culture'd love;Wave follows wave, the letter'd lines decay,So Love's soft forms neglected melt away.
Words in this poem
- cull v. t.
- To separate, select, or pick out; to choose and gather or collect; as, to cuil flowers. [OE., OF. cuillir, coillir, F.cueillir, to gather, pluck, pick, fr. L. colligere. See Coil, v. t., and cf. Collect.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Additional Notes is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Botanic Garden. Part 2, Containing the Loves of the Plants. A Poem. With Philosophical Notes., Project Gutenberg ebook #10671; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Erasmus Darwin, Additional Notes, in The Botanic Garden, Part II: The Loves of the Plants (1789), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10671, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/darwin-loves-of-plants/additional-notes.html, id L23545.
Form and metre
Additional Notes is 11 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See 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.
- 3 AABB improveA · loveA · decayB · awayB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| --------emerging Naïads cull | 5 | ˘/˘·· |
| From leathery pods the vegetable wool. | 10 | ·/˘˘··/˘˘· |
| ----eam circum Milesia vellera nymphæ | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Carpebant, hyali saturo fucata colore. | 13 | ············· |
| Virg. Georg. IV. 334. | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Saw on his helm, her virgin hands inwove, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Bright stars of gold, and mystic knots of love; | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Green swells the beech, the widening knots improve, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| So spread the tender growths of culture'd love; | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Wave follows wave, the letter'd lines decay, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| So Love's soft forms neglected melt away. | 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.