Shakspeare
Fair star of beauty’s heaven! to call thee mine,All other joys I joyously would yield;My knightly crest, my bounding barb resign,For the poor shepherd’s crook and daisied field;For courts or camps no wish my soul would prove,So thou wouldst live with me, and be my love!
Words in this poem
- knightly a.
- Of or pertaining to a knight; becoming a knight; chivalrous; as, a knightly combat; a knightly spirit. [AS. cnihtlic boyish.]
- daisied a.
- Full of daisies; adorned with daisies.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Shakspeare 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, Shakspeare, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/shakspeare.html, id L13510.
Form and metre
Shakspeare is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCC. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables.
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 ABABCC mineA · yieldB · resignA · fieldB · proveC · loveC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Fair star of beauty’s heaven! to call thee mine, | 10 | ···/˘/···· |
| All other joys I joyously would yield; | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| My knightly crest, my bounding barb resign, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| For the poor shepherd’s crook and daisied field; | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| For courts or camps no wish my soul would prove, | 10 | ·········· |
| So thou wouldst live with me, and be my love! | 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.