A Love for Winged Things
My love flowed e'er for things with wings.When boy I sought for forest fowl,And caged them in rude rushes' mesh,And fed them with my breakfast roll;So that, though fragile were the door,They rarely fled, and even thenWould flutter back at faintest call!
Man-grown, I charm for men.
Words in this poem
- caged a.
- Confined in, or as in, a cage; like a cage or prison.
- mesh n.
- The opening or space inclosed by the threads of a net between knot and knot, or the threads inclosing such a space; network; a net. [AS. masc, max, m; akin to D. maas, masche, OHG. masca, Icel. möskvi; cf. Lith. mazgas a knot, megsti to weave nets, to knot.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Love for Winged Things is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, the various hands translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Victor Hugo, A Love for Winged Things, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/a-love-for-winged-things.html, id L26790.
Form and metre
A Love for Winged Things is 8 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My love flowed e'er for things with wings. | 8 | ········ |
| When boy I sought for forest fowl, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And caged them in rude rushes' mesh, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And fed them with my breakfast roll; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| So that, though fragile were the door, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| They rarely fled, and even then | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Would flutter back at faintest call! | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Man-grown, I charm for men. | 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.