Moorish Gathering-Song: Zorzico
Chains on the cities! gloom in the air!Come to the hills! fresh breezes are there.Silence and fear in the rich orange bowers!Come to the rocks where freedom hath towers.
Come from the Darro!--changed is its tone;Come where the streams no bondage have known;Wildly and proudly foaming they leap,Singing of freedom from steep to steep.
Come from Alhambra!--garden and groveNow may not shelter beauty or love.Blood on the waters! death midst the flowers!--Only the spear and the rock are ours.
Words in this poem
- alhambra n.
- The palace of the Moorish kings at Granada. [Ultimately fr. Ar. al the + hamra red; i. e., the red (sc. house).]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Moorish Gathering-Song: Zorzico 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, Moorish Gathering-Song: Zorzico, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/moorish-gathering-song-zorzico.html, id L19634.
Form and metre
Moorish Gathering-Song: Zorzico is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is AABB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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 AABB airA · thereA · bowersB · towersB
- 2 AABB toneA · knownA · leapB · steepB
- 3 --AA grove · love · flowersA · oursA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Chains on the cities! gloom in the air! | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Come to the hills! fresh breezes are there. | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Silence and fear in the rich orange bowers! | 11 | /˘·····/˘/˘ |
| Come to the rocks where freedom hath towers. | 10 | ·····/˘·/˘ |
| Come from the Darro!--changed is its tone; | 10 | ······˘··· |
| Come where the streams no bondage have known; | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Wildly and proudly foaming they leap, | 9 | /˘·/˘/˘·· |
| Singing of freedom from steep to steep. | 9 | /˘·/˘···· |
| Come from Alhambra!--garden and grove | 9 | ··˘/˘/˘·· |
| Now may not shelter beauty or love. | 9 | ···/˘/˘·· |
| Blood on the waters! death midst the flowers! | 10 | ···/˘···/˘ |
| --Only the spear and the rock are ours. | 10 | /˘······/˘ |
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.