Fill a glass with golden wine
FILL a glass with golden wine,And the while your lips are wetSet their perfume unto mine,And forget,Every kiss we take and giveLeaves us less of life to live.
Yet again! Your whim and mineIn a happy while have met.All your sweets to me resign,Nor regretThat we press with every breath,Sighed or singing, nearer death.
About this text
Fill a glass with golden wine 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, Fill a glass with golden wine, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/fill-a-glass-with-golden-wine.html, id L12390.
Form and metre
Fill a glass with golden wine is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABABCC. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.6 syllables. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic 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 ABABCC wineA · wetB · mineA · forgetB · giveC · liveC
- 2 ABABCC mineA · metB · resignA · regretB · breathC · deathC
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| FILL a glass with golden wine, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| And the while your lips are wet | 7 | ······· |
| Set their perfume unto mine, | 7 | ··˘/··· |
| And forget, | 3 | ·˘/ |
| Every kiss we take and give | 8 | /˘˘····· |
| Leaves us less of life to live. | 7 | ······· |
| Yet again! Your whim and mine | 7 | ·˘/···· |
| In a happy while have met. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| All your sweets to me resign, | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Nor regret | 3 | ·˘/ |
| That we press with every breath, | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| Sighed or singing, nearer death. | 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.