Freedom and the World
Weak is the People--but will grow beyond all other--Within thy holy arms, thou fruitful victor-mother!O Liberty, whose conquering flag is never furled--Thou bearest Him in whom is centred all the World.
About this text
Freedom and the World 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, Freedom and the World, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/freedom-and-the-world.html, id L26859.
Form and metre
Freedom and the World is 4 lines in a single stanza. 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 AABB otherA · motherA · furledB · worldB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Weak is the People--but will grow beyond all other-- | 13 | ···/˘······/˘ |
| Within thy holy arms, thou fruitful victor-mother! | 13 | ···/˘··/˘/˘/˘ |
| O Liberty, whose conquering flag is never furled-- | 10 | ·/˘·/˘··/· |
| Thou bearest Him in whom is centred all the World. | 12 | ·/˘····/˘··· |
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.