Your heart has trembled to my tongue
YOUR heart has trembled to my tongue,Your hands in mine have lain,Your thought to me has leaned and clung,Again and yet again,My dear,Again and yet again.
Now die the dream, or come the wife,The past is not in vain,For wholly as it was your lifeCan never be again,My dear,Can never be again.
Words in this poem
- clung a.
- Wasted away; shrunken. [Prop. p. p. fr. OE. clingen to wither. See Cling, v. i.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Your heart has trembled to my tongue 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, Your heart has trembled to my tongue, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/your-heart-has-trembled-to-my-tongue.html, id L12402.
Form and metre
Your heart has trembled to my tongue is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.0 syllables. 8% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 ABAB-B tongueA · lainB · clungA · againB · dear · againB
- 2 ABAB-B wifeA · vainB · lifeA · againB · dear · againB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| YOUR heart has trembled to my tongue, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Your hands in mine have lain, | 6 | ······ |
| Your thought to me has leaned and clung, | 8 | ········ |
| Again and yet again, | 6 | ˘/··˘/ |
| My dear, | 2 | ·· |
| Again and yet again. | 6 | ˘/··˘/ |
| Now die the dream, or come the wife, | 8 | ········ |
| The past is not in vain, | 6 | ······ |
| For wholly as it was your life | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Can never be again, | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| My dear, | 2 | ·· |
| Can never be again. | 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.