The Pity of the Angels
When an angel of kindnessSaw, doomed to the dark,Men framed in his likeness,He sought for a spark--Stray gem of God's gloryThat shines so serene--And, falling like lark,To brighten our story,Pure Pity was seen.
Words in this poem
- brighten v. t.
- To make bright or brighter; to make to shine; to increase the luster of; to give a brighter hue to.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Pity of the Angels 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 Pity of the Angels, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/the-pity-of-the-angels.html, id L26856.
Form and metre
The Pity of the Angels is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 -A-ABCABC kindness · darkA · likeness · sparkA · gloryB · sereneC · larkA · storyB · seenC
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When an angel of kindness | 7 | ··/˘·/˘ |
| Saw, doomed to the dark, | 5 | ····· |
| Men framed in his likeness, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| He sought for a spark-- | 5 | ····· |
| Stray gem of God's glory | 6 | ····/˘ |
| That shines so serene-- | 5 | ···˘/ |
| And, falling like lark, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| To brighten our story, | 6 | ·/˘//˘ |
| Pure Pity was seen. | 5 | ·/˘·· |
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.