Is There Some Spirit Sighing?
Is there some Spirit sighingWith sorrow in the air?Can weary hearts be dying,Vain love repining there?If not, then how can that wild wail,O sad Æeolian lyre!Be drawn forth by the wandering galeFrom thy deep thrilling wire?
No, no!--thou dost not borrowThat sadness from the wind,Nor are those tones of sorrowIn thee, O harp! enshrined;But in our own hearts deeply setLies the true quivering lyre,Whence love, and memory, and regretWake answers from thy wire.
Words in this poem
- thrilling a.
- Causing a thrill; causing tremulous excitement; deeply moving; as, a thrilling romance.
- borrow v. t.
- To receive from another as a loan, with the implied or expressed intention of returning the identical article or its equivalent in kind; -- the opposite of lend. [OE. borwen, AS. borgian, fr. borg, borh, pledge; akin to D. borg, G. borg; prob. fr. root of AS. beorgan to protect. Borough.]
- sadness n.
- Heaviness; firmness.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Is There Some Spirit Sighing? 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, Is There Some Spirit Sighing?, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/is-there-some-spirit-sighing.html, id L19708.
Form and metre
Is There Some Spirit Sighing? is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 ABABCDCD sighingA · airB · dyingA · thereB · wailC · lyreD · galeC · wireD
- 2 -A-ABCBC borrow · windA · sorrow · enshrinedA · setB · lyreC · regretB · wireC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Is there some Spirit sighing | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| With sorrow in the air? | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Can weary hearts be dying, | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| Vain love repining there? | 6 | ······ |
| If not, then how can that wild wail, | 8 | ········ |
| O sad Æeolian lyre! | 7 | ··˘/˘˘· |
| Be drawn forth by the wandering gale | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| From thy deep thrilling wire? | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| No, no!--thou dost not borrow | 7 | ·····/· |
| That sadness from the wind, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Nor are those tones of sorrow | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| In thee, O harp! enshrined; | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| But in our own hearts deeply set | 8 | ··/··/˘· |
| Lies the true quivering lyre, | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| Whence love, and memory, and regret | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Wake answers from thy wire. | 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.