The Rose and the Grave
The Grave said to the rose"What of the dews of dawn,Love's flower, what end is theirs?""And what of spirits flown,The souls whereon doth closeThe tomb's mouth unawares?"The Rose said to the Grave.
The Rose said: "In the shadeFrom the dawn's tears is madeA perfume faint and strange,Amber and honey sweet.""And all the spirits fleetDo suffer a sky-change,More strangely than the dew,To God's own angels new,"The Grave said to the Rose.
Words in this poem
- flown a.
- Flushed, inflated.
- whereon adv.
- On which; -- used relatively; as, the earth whereon we live.
- strangely adv.
- As something foreign, or not one's own; in a manner adapted to something foreign and strange.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Rose and the Grave 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 Rose and the Grave, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/the-rose-and-the-grave.html, id L26775.
Form and metre
The Rose and the Grave is 16 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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-B-AB- roseA · dawn · theirsB · flown · closeA · unawaresB · grave
- 2 AABCCBDD- shadeA · madeA · strangeB · sweetC · fleetC · changeB · dewD · newD · rose
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The Grave said to the rose | 6 | ······ |
| "What of the dews of dawn, | 6 | ······ |
| Love's flower, what end is theirs?" | 6 | ·/···· |
| "And what of spirits flown, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The souls whereon doth close | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| The tomb's mouth unawares?" | 6 | ····˘/ |
| The Rose said to the Grave. | 6 | ······ |
| The Rose said: "In the shade | 6 | ······ |
| From the dawn's tears is made | 6 | ······ |
| A perfume faint and strange, | 6 | ·˘/··· |
| Amber and honey sweet." | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| "And all the spirits fleet | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Do suffer a sky-change, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| More strangely than the dew, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| To God's own angels new," | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The Grave said to the Rose. | 6 | ······ |
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.