To Angelique III
Ne'er can I believe, young beauty,Thy disdainful lips alone:For such big black eyes as thine areVirtue never yet did own.
And those brown-streaked lies down-glancingSay "I love thee!" clearly scanned,Let thy little white heart kiss me--White heart, dost thou understand?
About this text
To Angelique III is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Ballads, Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, the Emma Lazarus translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Heinrich Heine, To Angelique III, in Poems and Ballads (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #31726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/heine-poems-ballads/to-angelique-iii.html, id L15434.
Form and metre
To Angelique III is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.6 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -A-A beauty · aloneA · are · ownA
- 2 -A-A glancing · scannedA · me · understandA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Ne'er can I believe, young beauty, | 8 | ···˘/·/˘ |
| Thy disdainful lips alone: | 7 | ·˘/˘·˘/ |
| For such big black eyes as thine are | 8 | ········ |
| Virtue never yet did own. | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| And those brown-streaked lies down-glancing | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Say "I love thee!" clearly scanned, | 8 | ····/˘·˘ |
| Let thy little white heart kiss me-- | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| White heart, dost thou understand? | 7 | ·····˘/ |
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.