The Meeting-Place
I MIND me of the hawthorn trees,With cuckoos flying near;The hawthorn blossoms smelt so sweet,The cuckoo called so clear!
The hill was steep enough to climb,It seemed to touch the sky!You saw two valleys from the top,The Severn and the Wye.
The Severn and the Wye you saw,And they were always green;I think it was the prettiest sightThat I have ever seen.
And there, so far above the town,With not a soul to see,Whenever she could slip awayMy love would come to me!
I never smell the hawthorn bloom,Or hear the cuckoo sing,But I am minded of my love,And Malvern Hills in Spring!
About this text
The Meeting-Place is in the public domain. This text is taken from Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #50591; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Radclyffe Hall, The Meeting-Place, in Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #50591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hall-three-counties/the-meeting-place.html, id L22665.
Form and metre
The Meeting-Place is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in common measure.
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 trees · nearA · sweet · clearA
- 2 -A-A climb · skyA · top · wyeA
- 3 -A-A saw · greenA · sight · seenA
- 4 -A-A town · seeA · away · meA
- 5 -A-A bloom · singA · love · springA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I MIND me of the hawthorn trees, | 8 | ·····/·· |
| With cuckoos flying near; | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| The hawthorn blossoms smelt so sweet, | 8 | ·/·/˘··· |
| The cuckoo called so clear! | 6 | ·/···· |
| The hill was steep enough to climb, | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| It seemed to touch the sky! | 6 | ······ |
| You saw two valleys from the top, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The Severn and the Wye. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The Severn and the Wye you saw, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And they were always green; | 6 | ···/·· |
| I think it was the prettiest sight | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That I have ever seen. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And there, so far above the town, | 8 | ········ |
| With not a soul to see, | 6 | ······ |
| Whenever she could slip away | 8 | ˘/˘···˘/ |
| My love would come to me! | 6 | ······ |
| I never smell the hawthorn bloom, | 8 | ·/˘··/·· |
| Or hear the cuckoo sing, | 6 | ···/·· |
| But I am minded of my love, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And Malvern Hills in Spring! | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.