The Invocation
Oh! art thou still on earth, my love?My only love!Or smiling in a brighter home,Far, far above?
Oh! is thy sweet voice fled, my love?Thy light step gone?And art thou not, in earth or heaven,Still, still my own?
I see thee with thy gleaming hair,In midnight dreams!But cold, and clear, and spirit-like,Thy soft eye seems.
Peace in thy saddest hour, my love!Dwelt on thy brow;But something mournfully divineThere shineth now!
And silent ever is thy lip,And pale thy cheek;--Oh! art thou earth’s, or art thou heaven’s?Speak to me, speak!
About this text
The Invocation 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, The Invocation, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/the-invocation.html, id L19653.
Form and metre
The Invocation is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 AA-A loveA · loveA · home · aboveA
- 2 -AAA love · goneA · heavenA · ownA
- 3 -A-A hair · dreamsA · like · seemsA
- 4 -A-A love · browA · divine · nowA
- 5 -A-A lip · cheekA · heaven's · speakA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Oh! art thou still on earth, my love? | 8 | ········ |
| My only love! | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Or smiling in a brighter home, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Far, far above? | 4 | ···· |
| Oh! is thy sweet voice fled, my love? | 8 | ········ |
| Thy light step gone? | 4 | ···· |
| And art thou not, in earth or heaven, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Still, still my own? | 4 | ···· |
| I see thee with thy gleaming hair, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| In midnight dreams! | 4 | ·/·· |
| But cold, and clear, and spirit-like, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Thy soft eye seems. | 4 | ···· |
| Peace in thy saddest hour, my love! | 9 | ···/˘/˘·· |
| Dwelt on thy brow; | 4 | ···· |
| But something mournfully divine | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| There shineth now! | 4 | ·/˘· |
| And silent ever is thy lip, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And pale thy cheek;-- | 4 | ···· |
| Oh! art thou earth’s, or art thou heaven’s? | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Speak to me, speak! | 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.