Seraphita
Come not before me now, O visionary face!Me tempest-tost, and borne along life's passionate sea;Troublous and dark and stormy though my passage be;Not here and now may we commingle or embrace,Lest the loud anguish of the waters should effaceThe bright illumination of thy memory,Which dominates the night; rest, far away from me,In the serenity of thine abiding place!
But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare,And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night!Stoop down but once in pity of my great despair,And let thine hand, though over late to help, alightBut once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair,Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight.
Words in this poem
- troublous a.
- Full of trouble; causing trouble.
- commingle v. t.
- To mingle together; to mix in one mass, or intimately; to blend.
- blare v. i.
- To sound loudly and somewhat harshly. [OE. blaren, bloren, to cry, woop; cf. G. plärren to bleat, D. blaren to bleat, cry, weep. Prob. an imitative word, but cf. also E. blast. Cf. Blore.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Seraphita is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems and Prose of Ernest Dowson, With a Memoir by Arthur Symons, Project Gutenberg ebook #8497; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ernest Dowson, Seraphita, in The Poems of Ernest Dowson (1896–1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8497, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dowson-poems/seraphita.html, id L01654.
Form and metre
Seraphita is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 11.9 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 14% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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 ABBAA-BA faceA · seaB · beB · embraceA · effaceA · memory · meB · placeA
- 2 ABABAB blareA · nightB · despairA · alightB · hairA · fightB
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Come not before me now, O visionary face! | 12 | ·······/˘·˘· |
| Me tempest-tost, and borne along life's passionate sea; | 12 | ·/˘···˘/·/˘· |
| Troublous and dark and stormy though my passage be; | 12 | /˘···/˘··/˘· |
| Not here and now may we commingle or embrace, | 12 | ······˘/˘·˘/ |
| Lest the loud anguish of the waters should efface | 12 | ···/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| The bright illumination of thy memory, | 12 | ··˘·˘/˘··/˘˘ |
| Which dominates the night; rest, far away from me, | 12 | ·/˘·····˘/·· |
| In the serenity of thine abiding place! | 12 | ··˘/˘˘··˘/˘· |
| But when the storm is highest, and the thunders blare, | 12 | ·····/˘··/˘· |
| And sea and sky are riven, O moon of all my night! | 13 | ·····/˘······ |
| Stoop down but once in pity of my great despair, | 12 | ·····/˘···˘/ |
| And let thine hand, though over late to help, alight | 12 | ··········˘/ |
| But once upon my pale eyes and my drowning hair, | 12 | ·········/˘· |
| Before the great waves conquer in the last vain fight. | 12 | ·····/˘····· |
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.