The Aloe
My life was like an Aloe flower, beneath an orient sky,Your sunshine touched it for an hour; it blossomed but to die.
Torn up, cast out, on rubbish heaps where red flames work their willEach atom of the Aloe keeps the flower-time fragrance still.
Words in this poem
- sunshine n.
- The light of the sun, or the place where it shines; the direct rays of the sun, the place where they fall, or the warmth and light which they give.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Aloe is in the public domain. This text is taken from India's Love Lyrics, Project Gutenberg ebook #8197; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Laurence Hope, The Aloe, in India's Love Lyrics (1901), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8197, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hope-india/the-aloe.html, id L22594.
Form and metre
The Aloe is 4 lines in 2 stanzas of 2 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AA skyA · dieA
- 2 AA willA · stillA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| My life was like an Aloe flower, beneath an orient sky, | 15 | ·····/·/···/˘·· |
| Your sunshine touched it for an hour; it blossomed but to die. | 14 | ·/·····/·/˘··· |
| Torn up, cast out, on rubbish heaps where red flames work their will | 14 | ·····/˘······· |
| Each atom of the Aloe keeps the flower-time fragrance still. | 14 | ·/˘··/···/·/˘· |
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.