Envoy
Dark aisles, new packs of cards,Mermaidens’ tails, cool swards,Dawn dews and starlit seas,White marbles, whiter words—To live, I think of these!
Words in this poem
- starlit a.
- Lighted by the stars; starlight.
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-5.html, id L12362.
Form and metre
Envoy is 5 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 6.0 syllables.
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 --A-A cards · swards · seasA · words · theseA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dark aisles, new packs of cards, | 6 | ······ |
| Mermaidens’ tails, cool swards, | 6 | ······ |
| Dawn dews and starlit seas, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| White marbles, whiter words— | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| To live, I think of these! | 6 | ······ |
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.