A Sonnet
WEEPING, murmuring, complaining,Lost to every gay delight;MYRA, too sincere for feigning,Fears th’ approaching bridal night.
Yet, why impair thy bright perfection?Or dim thy beauty with a tear?Had MYRA followed my direction,She long had wanted cause of fear.
About this text
A Sonnet is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Project Gutenberg ebook #3545; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Oliver Goldsmith, A Sonnet, in Poems (1764–1774), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3545, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/goldsmith-poems/a-sonnet.html, id L00425.
Form and metre
A Sonnet is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 87% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in trochaic 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 complainingA · delightB · feigningA · nightB
- 2 ABAB perfectionA · tearB · directionA · fearB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| WEEPING, murmuring, complaining, | 8 | /˘/˘˘˘/˘ |
| Lost to every gay delight; | 8 | ··/˘˘·˘/ |
| MYRA, too sincere for feigning, | 8 | /˘·˘/·/˘ |
| Fears th’ approaching bridal night. | 7 | ·˘/˘/˘· |
| Yet, why impair thy bright perfection? | 9 | ··˘/··˘/˘ |
| Or dim thy beauty with a tear? | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Had MYRA followed my direction, | 10 | ·/˘/˘˘·˘/˘ |
| She long had wanted cause of fear. | 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.