Bronwen of the Flowers
Bronwen gathered wild-flowersUp-and-down the lane;Her gathering touch upon themSweeter was than rain.
Now a blossom overblown,Now a bud begun--Her eye that lightened on themWas quicker than the sun.
One by one she named them,Oh, she did expressIn her pretty namingsAll their prettiness:
Some were fit for virgins,Some for merry dames,And the love with which she named themWas lovelier than their names.
Words in this poem
- prettiness n.
- The quality or state of being pretty; -- used sometimes in a disparaging sense.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bronwen of the Flowers is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sonnets and Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #56244; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Eleanor Farjeon, Bronwen of the Flowers, in Sonnets and Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56244, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/farjeon-sonnets-poems/bronwen-of-the-flowers.html, id L21968.
Form and metre
Bronwen of the Flowers is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 flowers · laneA · them · rainA
- 2 -A-A overblown · begunA · them · sunA
- 3 -A-A them · expressA · namings · prettinessA
- 4 -A-A virgins · damesA · them · namesA
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Bronwen gathered wild-flowers | 7 | /˘/˘·/˘ |
| Up-and-down the lane; | 5 | ····· |
| Her gathering touch upon them | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| Sweeter was than rain. | 5 | /˘··· |
| Now a blossom overblown, | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Now a bud begun-- | 5 | ···˘/ |
| Her eye that lightened on them | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Was quicker than the sun. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| One by one she named them, | 6 | ······ |
| Oh, she did express | 5 | ···˘/ |
| In her pretty namings | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| All their prettiness: | 5 | ··/˘˘ |
| Some were fit for virgins, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Some for merry dames, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| And the love with which she named them | 8 | ········ |
| Was lovelier than their names. | 7 | ······· |
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.