Mother and Child
One night a tiny dewdrop fellInto the bosom of a rose,--"Dear little one, I love thee well,Be ever here thy sweet repose!"
Seeing the rose with love bedight,The envious sky frowned dark, and thenSent forth a messenger of lightAnd caught the dewdrop up again.
"Oh, give me back my heavenly child,--My love!" the rose in anguish cried;Alas! the sky triumphant smiled,And so the flower, heart-broken, died.
Words in this poem
- bedight v. t.
- To bedeck; to array or equip; to adorn.
- envious a.
- Malignant; mischievous; spiteful. [OF. envios, F. envieux, fr. L. invidiosus, fr. invidia envy. See Envy, and cf. Invidious.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Mother and Child 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, Mother and Child, in A Little Book of Western Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9606, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/field-western-verse/mother-and-child.html, id L24629.
Form and metre
Mother and Child is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
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 ABAB fellA · roseB · wellA · reposeB
- 2 ABAB bedightA · thenB · lightA · againB
- 3 ABAB childA · criedB · smiledA · diedB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| One night a tiny dewdrop fell | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Into the bosom of a rose,-- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| "Dear little one, I love thee well, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Be ever here thy sweet repose!" | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Seeing the rose with love bedight, | 8 | /˘····˘/ |
| The envious sky frowned dark, and then | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Sent forth a messenger of light | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| And caught the dewdrop up again. | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| "Oh, give me back my heavenly child,-- | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| My love!" the rose in anguish cried; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Alas! the sky triumphant smiled, | 8 | ˘/··˘/˘· |
| And so the flower, heart-broken, died. | 8 | ···/·/˘· |
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.