A Fragment
Rest on your battle-fields, ye brave!Let the pines murmur o’er your grave,Your dirge be in the moaning wave--We call you back no more!
Oh! there was mourning when ye fell,In your own vales a deep-toned knell,An agony, a wild farewell--But that hath long been o’er.
Rest with your still and solemn fame;The hills keep record of your name,And never can a touch of shameDarken the buried brow.
But we on changeful days are cast,When bright names from their place fall fast;And ye that with your glory pass’d,We cannot mourn you now.
Words in this poem
- dirge n.
- A piece of music of a mournful character, to accompany funeral rites; a funeral hymn. [Contraction of Lat. dirige, direct thou (imperative of dirigere), the first word of a funeral hymn (Lat. transl. of Psalm v. 8) beginning, "Dirige, Domine, in c]
- changeful a.
- Full of change; mutable; inconstant; fickle; uncertain.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Fragment is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Felicia Hemans, Project Gutenberg ebook #66785; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Felicia Hemans, A Fragment, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/a-fragment.html, id L19298.
Form and metre
A Fragment is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AAA- braveA · graveA · waveA · more
- 2 AAA- fellA · knellA · farewellA · o'er
- 3 AAA- fameA · nameA · shameA · brow
- 4 AAA- castA · fastA · pass'dA · now
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Rest on your battle-fields, ye brave! | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Let the pines murmur o’er your grave, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Your dirge be in the moaning wave-- | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| We call you back no more! | 6 | ······ |
| Oh! there was mourning when ye fell, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| In your own vales a deep-toned knell, | 8 | ········ |
| An agony, a wild farewell-- | 8 | ·/˘˘···/ |
| But that hath long been o’er. | 6 | ······ |
| Rest with your still and solemn fame; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The hills keep record of your name, | 8 | ···˘/··· |
| And never can a touch of shame | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Darken the buried brow. | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| But we on changeful days are cast, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| When bright names from their place fall fast; | 8 | ········ |
| And ye that with your glory pass’d, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| We cannot mourn you now. | 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.