Sweet Sister
Sweet sister, if you knew, like me,The charms of guileless infancy,No more you'd envy riper years,Or smiles, more bitter than your tears.
But childhood passes in an hour,As perfume from a faded flower;The joyous voice of early gleeFlies, like the Halcyon, o'er the sea.
Enjoy your morn of early Spring;Soon time maturer thoughts must bring;Those hours, like flowers that interclimb,Should not be withered ere their time.
Too soon you'll weep, as we do now,O'er faithless friend, or broken vow,And hopeless sorrows, which our prideIn pleasure's whirl would vainly hide.
Laugh on! unconscious of thy doom,All innocence and opening bloom;Laugh on! while yet thine azure eyeMirrors the peace that reigns on high.
Words in this poem
- guileless a.
- Free from guile; artless.
- childhood n.
- The state of being a child; the time in which persons are children; the condition or time from infancy to puberty. [AS. cildhad; cild child + -had. See Child, and hood.]
- glee n.
- Music; minstrelsy; entertainment.
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
- maturer n.
- One who brings to maturity.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sweet Sister 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, Sweet Sister, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/sweet-sister.html, id L26855.
Form and metre
Sweet Sister is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 AABB meA · infancyA · yearsB · tearsB
- 2 AABB hourA · flowerA · gleeB · seaB
- 3 AABB springA · bringA · interclimbB · timeB
- 4 AABB nowA · vowA · prideB · hideB
- 5 AABB doomA · bloomA · eyeB · highB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet sister, if you knew, like me, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The charms of guileless infancy, | 8 | ···/˘/˘˘ |
| No more you'd envy riper years, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Or smiles, more bitter than your tears. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| But childhood passes in an hour, | 9 | ·/·/˘··/˘ |
| As perfume from a faded flower; | 9 | ·˘/··/˘/˘ |
| The joyous voice of early glee | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Flies, like the Halcyon, o'er the sea. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Enjoy your morn of early Spring; | 8 | ˘/···/˘· |
| Soon time maturer thoughts must bring; | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| Those hours, like flowers that interclimb, | 8 | ·/·/···· |
| Should not be withered ere their time. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Too soon you'll weep, as we do now, | 8 | ········ |
| O'er faithless friend, or broken vow, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And hopeless sorrows, which our pride | 8 | ·/˘/˘·/· |
| In pleasure's whirl would vainly hide. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Laugh on! unconscious of thy doom, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| All innocence and opening bloom; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘˘· |
| Laugh on! while yet thine azure eye | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Mirrors the peace that reigns on high. | 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.