The Orange Bough
Oh! bring me one sweet orange-bough,To fan my cheek, to cool my brow;One bough, with pearly blossoms drest,And bind it, mother! on my breast!
Go, seek the grove along the shore,Whose odours I must breathe no more;The grove where every scented treeThrills to the deep voice of the sea.
Oh! Love’s fond sighs, and fervent prayer,And wild farewell, are lingering there:Each leaf’s light whisper hath a toneMy faint heart, even in death, would own.
Then bear me thence one bough, to shedLife’s parting sweetness round my head;And bind it, mother! on my breastWhen I am laid in lonely rest.
Words in this poem
- fervent a.
- Hot; glowing; boiling; burning; as, a fervent summer. [F. fervent, L. fervens, -entis. p.pr. of fervere o the boiling hot, to boil, glow.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Orange Bough 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 Orange Bough, in Poems (1808–1835), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66785, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemans-poems/the-orange-bough.html, id L19643.
Form and metre
The Orange Bough is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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 AABB boughA · browA · drestB · breastB
- 2 AABB shoreA · moreA · treeB · seaB
- 3 AABB prayerA · thereA · toneB · ownB
- 4 AABB shedA · headA · breastB · restB
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! bring me one sweet orange-bough, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| To fan my cheek, to cool my brow; | 8 | ········ |
| One bough, with pearly blossoms drest, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And bind it, mother! on my breast! | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Go, seek the grove along the shore, | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| Whose odours I must breathe no more; | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The grove where every scented tree | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Thrills to the deep voice of the sea. | 8 | ········ |
| Oh! Love’s fond sighs, and fervent prayer, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And wild farewell, are lingering there: | 8 | ···/·/˘· |
| Each leaf’s light whisper hath a tone | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| My faint heart, even in death, would own. | 8 | ···/···· |
| Then bear me thence one bough, to shed | 8 | ········ |
| Life’s parting sweetness round my head; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And bind it, mother! on my breast | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| When I am laid in lonely rest. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
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.