The Poet's Love for Liveliness
For me, whate'er my life and lot may show,Years blank with gloom or cheered by mem'ry's glow,Turmoil or peace; never be it mine, I pray,To be a dweller of the peopled earth,Save 'neath a roof alive with children's mirthLoud through the livelong day.
So, if my hap it be to see once moreThose scenes my footsteps tottered in before,An infant follower in Napoleon's train:Rodrigo's holds, Valencia and Leon,And both Castiles, and mated Aragon;Ne'er be it mine, O Spain!
To pass thy plains with cities scant between,Thy stately arches flung o'er deep ravine,Thy palaces, of Moor's or Roman's time;Or the swift makings of thy Guadalquiver,Save in those gilded cars, where bells foreverRing their melodious chime.
Words in this poem
- turmoil v. t.
- To harass with commotion; to disquiet; to worry.
- peopled a.
- Stocked with, or as with, people; inhabited.
- livelong a.
- Whole; entire; long in passing; -- used of time, as day or night, in adverbial phrases, and usually with a sense of tediousness. [For lifelong. Cf. Lifelong.]
- valencia n.
- A kind of woven fabric for waistcoats, having the weft of wool and the warp of silk or cotton. [Perhaps fr. Valence in France.]
- chime n.
- The harmonious sound of bells, or of musical instruments. [OE. chimbe, prop., cymbal, OF. cymbe, cymble, in a dialectic form, chymble, F. cymbale, L. cymbalum, fr. Gr. Cymbal.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Poet's Love for Liveliness 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 Poet's Love for Liveliness, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/the-poet-s-love-for-liveliness.html, id L26739.
Form and metre
The Poet's Love for Liveliness is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 56% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
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 AABCCB showA · glowA · prayB · earthC · mirthC · dayB
- 2 AABBBB moreA · beforeA · trainB · leonB · aragonB · spainB
- 3 AAB--B betweenA · ravineA · timeB · guadalquiver · forever · chimeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| For me, whate'er my life and lot may show, | 11 | ··˘˘/······ |
| Years blank with gloom or cheered by mem'ry's glow, | 10 | ·········· |
| Turmoil or peace; never be it mine, I pray, | 10 | /···/····· |
| To be a dweller of the peopled earth, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Save 'neath a roof alive with children's mirth | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| Loud through the livelong day. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| So, if my hap it be to see once more | 10 | ·········· |
| Those scenes my footsteps tottered in before, | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| An infant follower in Napoleon's train: | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘· |
| Rodrigo's holds, Valencia and Leon, | 11 | ˘/˘·˘/˘˘·/˘ |
| And both Castiles, and mated Aragon; | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Ne'er be it mine, O Spain! | 6 | ······ |
| To pass thy plains with cities scant between, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Thy stately arches flung o'er deep ravine, | 10 | ·/˘/˘···˘/ |
| Thy palaces, of Moor's or Roman's time; | 10 | ·/˘˘···/˘· |
| Or the swift makings of thy Guadalquiver, | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| Save in those gilded cars, where bells forever | 11 | ···/˘···˘/˘ |
| Ring their melodious chime. | 7 | ··˘/˘˘· |
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.