The Danube in Wrath
Ye daughters mine! will naught abateYour fierce interminable hate?Still am I doomed to rue the fateThat such unfriendly neighbors made?The while ye might, in peaceful cheer,Mirror upon your waters clear,Semlin! thy Gothic steeples dear,And thy bright minarets, Belgrade!
About this text
The Danube in Wrath 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, The Danube in Wrath, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/the-danube-in-wrath.html, id L26734.
Form and metre
The Danube in Wrath is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AAABCCCB abateA · hateA · fateA · madeB · cheerC · clearC · dearC · belgradeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Ye daughters mine! will naught abate | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Your fierce interminable hate? | 8 | ··˘/˘˘˘· |
| Still am I doomed to rue the fate | 8 | ········ |
| That such unfriendly neighbors made? | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘· |
| The while ye might, in peaceful cheer, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Mirror upon your waters clear, | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Semlin! thy Gothic steeples dear, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And thy bright minarets, Belgrade! | 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.