Envoy

W. E. Henley (1849–1903) · 1898

rhyming couplets · 4 lines · from Poems

And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays—Midsummer days! Midsummer days!It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights—Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!

Words in this poem

midsummer n.
The middle of summer. Shak. Midsummer daisy (Bot.), the oxeye daisy. [AS. midsumor.]

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-3.html, id L12358.

Form and metre

Envoy is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The lines average 9.5 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. 1 AA-- staysA · daysA · plights · nights
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.

LineSyl.Stress
And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays—11···········
Midsummer days! Midsummer days!8//˘·//˘·
It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights—10··········
Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights!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.

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