A Valentine
Four little sisters standing in a row--Which of them I love best I really do not know.Sometimes it is the sister dressed out so fine in blue,And sometimes she who flaunts the beauteous robe of emerald hue;Sometimes for her who wears the brown my tender heart has bled,And then again I am consumed of love for her in red.So now I think I'll send this valentine unto the four--I love them all so very much--how could a man do more?
Words in this poem
- beauteous a.
- Full of beauty; beautiful; very handsome. [Mostly poetic] -- Beau"te*ous*ly, adv. --
- valentine n.
- A sweetheart chosen on St. Valentine's Day.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Valentine is in the public domain. This text is taken from Hoosier Lyrics, Project Gutenberg ebook #36150; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Eugene Field, A Valentine, in Hoosier Lyrics (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36150, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/field-poems/a-valentine.html, id L11621.
Form and metre
A Valentine is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.2 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic heptameter.
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 AABBCCDD rowA · knowA · blueB · hueB · bledC · redC · fourD · moreD
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Four little sisters standing in a row-- | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Which of them I love best I really do not know. | 12 | ·······/˘··· |
| Sometimes it is the sister dressed out so fine in blue, | 14 | ˘/···/˘·˘····· |
| And sometimes she who flaunts the beauteous robe of emerald hue; | 15 | ·˘/····/˘˘··/˘· |
| Sometimes for her who wears the brown my tender heart has bled, | 14 | ˘/·······/˘··· |
| And then again I am consumed of love for her in red. | 14 | ··˘/··˘/······ |
| So now I think I'll send this valentine unto the four-- | 14 | ·······/˘····· |
| I love them all so very much--how could a man do more? | 14 | ·····/˘······· |
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.