To A. D
THE nightingale has a lyre of gold,The lark’s is a clarion-call,And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,But I love him best of all.
For his song is all of the joy of life,And we in the mad, spring weather,We two have listened till he sangOur hearts and lips together.
Words in this poem
- boxwood n.
- The wood of the box (Buxus).
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To A. D 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, To A. D, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/to-a-d.html, id L12401.
Form and metre
To A. D is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.4 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -A-A gold · callA · flute · allA
- 2 -A-A life · weatherA · sang · togetherA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| THE nightingale has a lyre of gold, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The lark’s is a clarion-call, | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, | 10 | ··/˘···/·· |
| But I love him best of all. | 7 | ······· |
| For his song is all of the joy of life, | 10 | ·········· |
| And we in the mad, spring weather, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| We two have listened till he sang | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Our hearts and lips together. | 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.