The Road to Colla
THE blossoms of a Judas treeDeep pink against an azure sea,A silver moth on thoughtless wing,A hidden bird that lights to sing,A little cloud that wanders by,Across the endless field of sky.
A city in the far away,Upon the hills beyond the bay,And over all, the sun divine,Pouring his stream of burning wineLike nectar strong with youth and mirth,Into this goblet of the earth!
About this text
The Road to Colla 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 Road to Colla, in Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #50591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hall-three-counties/the-road-to-colla.html, id L22685.
Form and metre
The Road to Colla is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBCC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%).
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 AABBCC treeA · seaA · wingB · singB · byC · skyC
- 2 AABBCC awayA · bayA · divineB · wineB · mirthC · earthC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| THE blossoms of a Judas tree | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Deep pink against an azure sea, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A silver moth on thoughtless wing, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| A hidden bird that lights to sing, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| A little cloud that wanders by, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Across the endless field of sky. | 8 | ˘/·/˘··· |
| A city in the far away, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Upon the hills beyond the bay, | 8 | ········ |
| And over all, the sun divine, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Pouring his stream of burning wine | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Like nectar strong with youth and mirth, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Into this goblet of the earth! | 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.