Amour 21
Letters and lynes, we see, are soone defaced,Mettles doe waste and fret with cankers rust;The Diamond shall once consume to dust,And freshest colours with foule staines disgraced.Paper and yncke can paynt but naked words,To write with blood of force offends the sight,And if with teares, I find them all too light;And sighes and signes a silly hope affoords.O, sweetest shadow! how thou seru'st my turne,Which still shalt be as long as there is Sunne,Nor whilst the world is neuer shall be done,Whilst Moone shall shyne by night, or any fire shall burne:That euery thing whence shadow doth proceede,May in his shadow my Loues story reade.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Amour 21 is in the public domain. This text is taken from Minor Poems of Michael Drayton, Project Gutenberg ebook #17873; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Michael Drayton, Amour 21, in Minor Poems (1594–1619), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17873, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/drayton-minor-poems/amour-21.html, id L20562.
Form and metre
Amour 21 is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
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.
- 1 ABBA-CC-DEED-- defacedA · rustB · dustB · disgracedA · words · sightC · lightC · affoords · turneD · sunneE · doneE · burneD · proceede · reade
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Letters and lynes, we see, are soone defaced, | 10 | /˘······˘/ |
| Mettles doe waste and fret with cankers rust; | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| The Diamond shall once consume to dust, | 9 | ·/˘··˘/·· |
| And freshest colours with foule staines disgraced. | 11 | ·/˘/˘·/˘·˘/ |
| Paper and yncke can paynt but naked words, | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| To write with blood of force offends the sight, | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| And if with teares, I find them all too light; | 10 | ·········· |
| And sighes and signes a silly hope affoords. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| O, sweetest shadow! how thou seru'st my turne, | 11 | ·/˘/······· |
| Which still shalt be as long as there is Sunne, | 10 | ·········· |
| Nor whilst the world is neuer shall be done, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Whilst Moone shall shyne by night, or any fire shall burne: | 12 | ·······/˘/·· |
| That euery thing whence shadow doth proceede, | 10 | ·····/···· |
| May in his shadow my Loues story reade. | 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.