Leave Me Not Yet
Leave me not yet! through rosy skies from far,But now the song-birds to their nests return;The quivering image of the first pale starOn the dim lake scarce yet begins to burn:Leave me not yet!
Not yet! oh, hark! low tones from hidden streams,Piercing the shivery leaves, even now arise;Their voices mingle not with daylight dreams,They are of vesper’s hymns and harmonies:Leave me not yet!
My thoughts are like those gentle sounds, dear love!By day shut up in their own still recess;They wait for dews on earth, for stars above,Then to breathe out their soul of tenderness:Leave me not yet!
Words in this poem
- scarce a.
- Not plentiful or abundant; in small quantity in proportion to the demand; not easily to be procured; rare; uncommon. [OE. scars, OF. escars, eschars, LL. scarpsus, for L. excerptus, p. p. of excerpere to pick out, and hence to contract, to shorten; ex (see Ex-) + carpere. See C]
- shivery a.
- Tremulous; shivering. Mallet.
- daylight n.
- The light of day as opposed to the darkness of night; the light of the sun, as opposed to that of the moon or to artificial light.
- vesper n.
- The evening star; Hesper; Venus, when seen after sunset; hence, the evening. [L., the evening, the evening star, the west; akin to Gr. west. Cf. Hesperian, Vespers.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Leave Me Not Yet 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, Leave Me Not Yet, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/leave-me-not-yet.html, id L19642.
Form and metre
Leave Me Not Yet is 15 lines in 3 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABAB- farA · returnB · starA · burnB · yet
- 2 ABAB- streamsA · ariseB · dreamsA · harmoniesB · yet
- 3 ABAB- loveA · recessB · aboveA · tendernessB · yet
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Leave me not yet! through rosy skies from far, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| But now the song-birds to their nests return; | 10 | ········˘/ |
| The quivering image of the first pale star | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| On the dim lake scarce yet begins to burn: | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Leave me not yet! | 4 | ···· |
| Not yet! oh, hark! low tones from hidden streams, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Piercing the shivery leaves, even now arise; | 11 | /˘·/˘˘·/·˘/ |
| Their voices mingle not with daylight dreams, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/·· |
| They are of vesper’s hymns and harmonies: | 10 | ···/˘··/˘˘ |
| Leave me not yet! | 4 | ···· |
| My thoughts are like those gentle sounds, dear love! | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| By day shut up in their own still recess; | 10 | ········˘/ |
| They wait for dews on earth, for stars above, | 10 | ·········· |
| Then to breathe out their soul of tenderness: | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Leave me not yet! | 4 | ···· |
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.