The Safe-Guarding of My Soul
The safe-guarding of my soul be Thine,O Father Ever-mighty;O Blessed Mary,Nurse of the King of Glory;Michael the angel,Their peaceful messenger,The twelve apostles, andThe Lord of Mercy,So that they may beSafe-guarding my soulUnto the city of Glory.
About this text
The Safe-Guarding of My Soul 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, The Safe-Guarding of My Soul, in The Poem-Book of the Gael (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #46917, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hull-gael/the-safe-guarding-of-my-soul.html, id L11750.
Form and metre
The Safe-Guarding of My Soul is 11 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 89% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.1 syllables. 7 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 27% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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------A thine · mighty · mary · gloryA · angel · messenger · and · mercy · be · soul · gloryA
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 safe-guarding of my soul be Thine, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| O Father Ever-mighty; | 7 | ·/˘/˘/˘ |
| O Blessed Mary, | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Nurse of the King of Glory; | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Michael the angel, | 5 | /˘·/˘ |
| Their peaceful messenger, | 6 | ·/˘/˘˘ |
| The twelve apostles, and | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| The Lord of Mercy, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| So that they may be | 5 | ····· |
| Safe-guarding my soul | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Unto the city of Glory. | 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.