Is Truagh Gan Mise I Sasana
'Tis a pity I'm not in England,Or with one from Erin thither bound,Out in the midst of the ocean,Where the thousands of ships are drowned.
From wave to wave of the oceanTo be guided on with the wind and the rain--And, O King! that Thou might'st guide meBack to my love again!
Words in this poem
- erin n.
- An early, and now a poetic, name of Ireland. [Ir. Cf. Aryan.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Is Truagh Gan Mise I Sasana is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poem-Book of the Gael Translations from Irish Gaelic Poetry into English Prose and Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #46917; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Eleanor Hull, Is Truagh Gan Mise I Sasana, in The Poem-Book of the Gael (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #46917, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hull-gael/is-truagh-gan-mise-i-sasana.html, id L11770.
Form and metre
Is Truagh Gan Mise I Sasana is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. 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 78%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.4 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 AA-A englandA · boundA · ocean · drownedA
- 2 AA-A oceanA · rainA · me · againA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 'Tis a pity I'm not in England, | 9 | ··/˘···/˘ |
| Or with one from Erin thither bound, | 9 | ····/˘/˘· |
| Out in the midst of the ocean, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Where the thousands of ships are drowned. | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| From wave to wave of the ocean | 8 | ······/˘ |
| To be guided on with the wind and the rain-- | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| And, O King! that Thou might'st guide me | 8 | ········ |
| Back to my love again! | 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.