Japanese Lullaby
Sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings,--Little blue pigeon with velvet eyes;Sleep to the singing of mother-bird swinging--Swinging the nest where her little one lies.
Away out yonder I see a star,--Silvery star with a tinkling song;To the soft dew falling I hear it calling--Calling and tinkling the night along.
In through the window a moonbeam comes,--Little gold moonbeam with misty wings;All silently creeping, it asks, "Is he sleeping--Sleeping and dreaming while mother sings?"
Up from the sea there floats the sobOf the waves that are breaking upon the shore,As though they were groaning in anguish, and moaning--Bemoaning the ship that shall come no more.
But sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings,--Little blue pigeon with mournful eyes;Am I not singing?--see, I am swinging--Swinging the nest where my darling lies.
Words in this poem
- yonder adv.
- At a distance, but within view. [OE. yonder, ýonder; cf. OD. ginder, Goth. jaindr there. Yond, adv.]
- moonbeam n.
- A ray of light from the moon.
- 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,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Japanese Lullaby is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Little Book of Western Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #9606; 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, Japanese Lullaby, in A Little Book of Western Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9606, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/field-western-verse/japanese-lullaby.html, id L24661.
Form and metre
Japanese Lullaby is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 wings · eyesA · swinging · liesA
- 2 -AAA star · songA · callingA · alongA
- 3 -A-A comes · wingsA · sleeping · singsA
- 4 -A-A sob · shoreA · moaning · moreA
- 5 -A-A wings · eyesA · swinging · liesA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings,-- | 9 | ·/˘/˘···· |
| Little blue pigeon with velvet eyes; | 9 | /˘·/˘·/˘· |
| Sleep to the singing of mother-bird swinging-- | 11 | ···/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Swinging the nest where her little one lies. | 10 | /˘····/˘·· |
| Away out yonder I see a star,-- | 9 | ˘/·/˘···· |
| Silvery star with a tinkling song; | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| To the soft dew falling I hear it calling-- | 11 | ····/˘···/˘ |
| Calling and tinkling the night along. | 9 | /˘·/˘··˘/ |
| In through the window a moonbeam comes,-- | 9 | ···/˘·/·· |
| Little gold moonbeam with misty wings; | 9 | /˘·/··/˘· |
| All silently creeping, it asks, "Is he sleeping-- | 11 | ·/˘/˘····/˘ |
| Sleeping and dreaming while mother sings?" | 9 | /˘·/˘·/˘· |
| Up from the sea there floats the sob | 8 | ········ |
| Of the waves that are breaking upon the shore, | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| As though they were groaning in anguish, and moaning-- | 12 | ····/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Bemoaning the ship that shall come no more. | 10 | ˘/˘······· |
| But sleep, little pigeon, and fold your wings,-- | 10 | ··/˘/˘···· |
| Little blue pigeon with mournful eyes; | 9 | /˘·/˘·/˘· |
| Am I not singing?--see, I am swinging-- | 10 | ···/˘···/˘ |
| Swinging the nest where my darling lies. | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
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.