Envoy
Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl—Youth is the sign of them, one and all.A smouldering hearth and a silent stage—These are a type of the world of Age.
Words in this poem
- turmoil v. t.
- To harass with commotion; to disquiet; to worry.
- smouldering a.
- Being in a state of suppressed activity; quiet but not dead.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Envoy is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #1568; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. E. Henley, Envoy, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/envoy-2.html, id L12356.
Form and metre
Envoy is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 9.2 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 brawlA · allA · stageB · ageB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl— | 9 | /˘·/·/˘·· |
| Youth is the sign of them, one and all. | 9 | ········· |
| A smouldering hearth and a silent stage— | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| These are a type of the world of Age. | 9 | ········· |
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.